


neither sea nor shore

by iridan



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alernate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canon Continuation, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Found Families, Low Chaos Corvo Attano, Medium Chaos Everyone Else, Multi, Mysteries, Post-DotO, Strong Language, The Subtle Knife, intercision
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-04-17 15:40:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14192277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridan/pseuds/iridan
Summary: When Billie was a kid, she used to wish that she could separate from her dæmon like Daud could separate from his.  It had seemed souseful; Tavor had been able to soar miles and miles away from Daud, letting him gather twice the information, collect twice the secrets.   Daud had inspired fear and awe just by walking around without his dæmon at his side.  Everybody knew him for a witch, for a heretic.  Everybody knew that he’d hadpower.Billie had wanted that so badly it had made her teeth hurt.(Or, a post-DotO dæmon!au.  Billie has a knife that can cut between worlds, Corvo Attano's dæmon is incapable of minding her own business, and the Outsider's dæmon has been missing for four thousand odd years.  Billie has been looking for a family since Deirdre died in her arms.  Somehow this isn't how she imagined finding one.)





	1. vipera dinniki

**Author's Note:**

> What's up! Reinventing myself on AO3 because I love dæmon AUs. If you know who I've been on this website in the past, you know too much.
> 
> Title is taken from Milton's Paradise Lost.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Some brief notes on _His Dark Materials_ , the other half of this au's parent material, and dæmons:
> 
> 1\. HDM is a trilogy of YA-ish books by Phillip Pullman. The protagonist, Lyra, is a girl who lives in another world, where all humans are born with _dæmons_ , physical manifestations of a person's soul that live outside a person's body and take the shape of an animal.  
> 2\. Dæmons can talk, think, and feel. They are connected to their human on a profound level; most dæmons can't even be more than a few feet away from their human without both human and dæmon experiencing great pain. When a human dies in Lyra's world, their dæmon dissolves into dust. Most dæmons are the opposite gender of their human; women have male dæmons, and men have female dæmons. Same-sex dæmons are rare. Pullman did not stop to consider gender or sexuality politics when writing these books in the '90s, so there's some contention in the HDM fandom about the gendering of dæmons.  
> 3\. The dæmons of adults are _settled_ , meaning they have one form (crow, dog, snake, cat, bear, etc etc) and do not change. The dæmons of children _can_ change, and do so very often. A dæmon settles in their final form sometime during adolescence and marks a transition from childhood to adulthood.  
>  4\. A dæmon's final form is representative of aspects of their human's nature. Symbolism is pretty important in Pullman's work. However, I have tried to be a bit more subtle in choosing dæmon forms, because nothing riles me up like oversimplified, obvious dæmon choices for characters. (For example, Corvo Attano does not have a crow dæmon. I will fight you about it.) Despite being closely tied to their humans, dæmons have their own personalities and are not mirrors of their humans, but rather expressions of a more complete character. Lyra, who's very brave and often foolish, has a very cautious, considering dæmon in Pantalaimon.  
> 5\. People don't touch a dæmon who isn't theirs. Most dæmons only talk to their own humans or to each other. Speaking to another person's dæmon is considered rude, and touching another person's dæmon is both painful and a great taboo.  
> 6\. Dæmons can be "cut" from their human during a process called _intercision_. Performing intercision is a despicable act, and incredibly traumatic for the intercised. Because dæmons are _part of someone's actual soul,_ most people don't survive the process.

neither sea nor shore

 

When Billie’d been a kid, she’d wished that she could separate from her dæmon like Daud could separate from his.  It had seemed so _useful_ ; Tavor had been able to soar miles and miles away from Daud.  She’d been able to gather secrets and provide an extra pair of eyes.  She’d been able to terrify and intimidate their enemies, and impress and inspire their allies.  Daud had invoked fear and awe just by walking around without his dæmon at his side. Everybody knew him for a witch, for a heretic. Everybody knew that he’d had _power_. 

Billie had wanted that so badly it had made her teeth hurt. 

All of the Whalers had trained to be able to separate farther from their dæmons than normal men.  Most people could move three or four meters away from their dæmons without any pain.  Strong-willed people could usually separate up to five or six meters.  Seven or eight meters of separation was nearly unheard of.  

To move up from a novice, a Whaler and their dæmon had to be able to move and function at least ten meters away from each other. 

By the end of their training, Billie and Tam could be fifteen meters apart but not any farther. Billie had been viciously jealous; Thomas, who’d come up in the same group of novices, had been able to walk seventeen meters away from his dæmon Abia.  Billie had been better at everything else than Thomas, of course, and she’d been the one Daud raised to be his second when his previous second Adena caught the wrong end of an Overseer’s bullet, but she’d never forgotten the way Thomas grinned when Billie had stopped walking at fifteen meters, tears in her eyes, and he’d kept going.   

Tam settled as a [serpent](https://viperacaucasica.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/img_9981w.jpg?resize=474%2C316) anyway, fierce enough that people were afraid of Billie even though they never thought her a witch or a heretic until it was too late, and Billie let the dream of sending Tam across the city to gather secrets for her die out.  Daud’s Tavor had been an owl; she’d had wings to carry her across Dunwall, high above bullets or rats or wandering wolfhounds. Billie’s Tam settled in a form without legs. A kid’s dreams were one thing, but a Whaler had needed to be practical.

When Billie left--and she always frames it that way in her head, _left_ , like she didn’t get out of Dunwall by the skin of her teeth and with her heart in shreds, torn apart by her own stupid fucking pride--she’d been grateful Tam had to stay close anyway.  He’d been so furious with her that if he could  have left, he would have.  

As it was Tam spent their first few years in Karnaca curled up into a tight, bristling ball, flashing fangs at anyone who comes too close, even Billie.  Especially Billie.

But time soothed even the worst wounds, so the saying went.  It took a few years, but Tam eventually forgave Billie, even though Billie doesn’t quite forgive herself until she’s burning what’s left of Daud on the wreckage of the Dreadful Wale, hoping against everything she knows of the world that his spirit had found his Tavor again, that he’s happy, that he’s whole.

Billie’s years in Karnaca were good.  She liked being Meagan. Tam liked her being Meagan too, once he’d gotten over the mess she’d made of Dunwall.  Anton Sokolov was and is a good friend to both of them.  So is Stilton. For years Billie’s life was full of shipping manifests and arguing with Anton and listening to Aramis bitch about what a useless fop Luca Abele turned out to be, not that Billie needed any reminders on _that_ front.

Billie doesn’t think about being able to separate from Tam again until she’s missing an eye, an arm, and two fingers.  Until she’s got a magic knife that can cut windows into other worlds. Until she’s got a former god sleeping on her couch, curled up under her only blanket, and a new impossible task in front of her. 

The Outsider does not have a dæmon. 

When she was a kid Billie used to imagine being able to command the respect and fear Daud had commanded by being able to separate from Tam, but the reality is that people without dæmons attract _attention_.  People _notice_ things like that; they’re trained to notice, practically from birth.  A person without a dæmon is not a person at all.  They’re a witch, or a shell, or a shade.  Dangerous to good normal folk.  Billie’s not actually sure what dæmons _are_ —no one is, really, though the Abbey insists that dæmons are the manifestations of a person’s soul and some particularly bold natural philosophers believe dæmons to be collections of elementary particles given familiar shapes and forms—but everyone has one. 

To _not_ have a dæmon is grounds for immediate imprisonment and interrogation, a nice long round with the ancient music screaming in one’s ears, and then a very public execution.    

In plague-stricken Dunwall, Daud had gotten away with it.  He’d _had_ a dæmon, of course, but she’d been away from him more often than not.  Everyone knew he was a heretic.  Plague and Hiram Burrows’ implicit protection had let Daud do whatever he wanted, and the rumors of witchcraft and heresy had only brought him more business. 

Heresy didn’t bring good business, not anymore, not in Karnaca.  Anyone who even looks like a witch gets drag away by the Overseers.  If they were in Dunwall, maybe they could get away with walking around with the Outsider’s dæmon conspicuously missing, because Corvo Attano lives in Dunwall and everyone knows he can separate from his dæmon.  Billie’s not sure how Attano managed to avoid cries of heresy with _that_ ability, but then Billie had dragged his dæmon halfway across Dunwall during Empress Jessamine’s assassination.  The Overseers and the City Watch had looked for Attano’s dæmon while Attano had been locked up in Coldridge, but they’d never found her; Attano and his dæmon spent at least six months apart from each other.  Maybe Attano had been able to claim that his ability to move apart from his dæmon came from that, rather than the Outsider’s favor. 

From what Billie hears, the Abbey in Dunwall’s also in disarray.  Apparently Delilah slaughtered most of them, and any who didn’t die under her reign fled back to Whitecliff. 

The Abbey in Karnaca is not nearly so disorganized.  Even though Emily—and Billie has to stop thinking of the Empress as _Emily_ , like she’s still lounging around in the sun on the deck of the _Dreadful Wale_ or goading Billie into swordfights, her kingfisher dæmon heckling Tam from the upper deck—sent Vice Overseer Byrne off on a very long vacation, Karnaca’s Overseers are angrier than a kicked bloodfly nest and twice as likely to lash out at anyone who comes too close. 

Billie has _just_ decided to free the Outsider, to spare his life instead of ending it.  It was a difficult decision, and she’s bled for it. Daud _died_ for it and lost the last scraps of himself as the Outsider gasped his first breath in four thousand years.      

Billie did not drag the Outsider out of the Void itself to lose him to the first pair of Overseers that see him walking around without a dæmon.  She’ll kill every last one of them if she has to, but she’s not losing him.

Tam shifts against Billie’s skin, stirring where he’s wrapped loosely around her neck.  Karnaca’s been good to him. When they left Dunwall, Tam’s scales had been ashy grey, dim and lackluster. 

After fifteen years in the south he’s brilliant, brighter than a tongue of fire.  His shape suits Billie. Sleek and powerful, deceptively strong. She’s missing an eye and an arm and a couple of fingers, but Tam is whole and flawless. 

“Flatterer,” Tam hisses, amused.  He squeezes Billie’s shoulders gently and peers down to consider their problem.  

The Outsider isn’t bothered at all by their scrutiny.  He hasn’t done much since they came stumbling down the mountain other than sleep and declare that he likes pear soda very much.  Billie had asked him about his dæmon, but he hadn’t said anything beyond, “She sings inside the heart of every leviathan.” 

Billie’s trying not to be relieved that the Outsider is still a cryptic little shit.  She doesn’t want to encourage him.

Tam laughs softly.  “She has to be somewhere,” he reasons, uncoiling from Billie’s neck and winding down her left arm.  Her missing fingers throb. She lost the ring and little finger of her left hand the moment she took the Twin-Bladed Knife from Dolores Michaels’ vault.  The knife had bitten them clean off. The Outsider told her that it was the Knife’s way of marking its master.  Until Billie died, the Twin-Bladed Knife would only ever work properly for _her._ He’d told her not to mourn her missing fingers.  It’s pretty depressing, but Billie’s solidly used to traumatic dismemberment by now.

Tam soothes the ache with a flick of his tongue, resting his head across the back of Billie’s knuckles.  “Every person has a dæmon.”

The Outsider snuffles in his sleep.  Billie is trying very hard not to be charmed, but she’s always been bad at being alone.  Deirdre, the Whalers, Anton, Emily. Billie doesn’t mind sharing her space. Nobody, not even a leviathan god, can snore louder than the Empress of the Isles. 

Billie chews her lip thoughtfully.  “But he died,” she says. “Where do dæmons go when we die?  Certainly not the Void.”

Daud had been there in the Void, a flickering shadow of who he used to be.  Tavor hadn’t been with him. All that had been left of her was a handful of dusty feathers scattered across Daud’s cold body.  She’d already been gone when Billie had come back to the Dreadful Whale.    

“Blood and masks and blades raised,” Daud had said.  “Billie Lurk. Have you seen her? My Tavor? Have you seen her?”  He’d touched his chest. “She’s my heart, and I--and I lost her. I lost my heart.  Have you seen her?”

Tam coils around Billie’s arm tightly, hanging on with all his might.  “We don’t go anywhere,” he says. “We just--fade.”

“So if the Outsider died, wouldn’t his dæmon have faded?”  Billie asks. She brushes her metal hand up Tam’s back, wishing she could feel the cool dryness of his scales.  “Four thousand years is a long time for her to linger without him.”

“She’s not dead,” Tam insists.  “He’s not--he’s not like the Eyeless’ victims, whose dæmons have been cut away.  He’s whole, he’s just.  Not with her.” 

Billie turns that over in her head.  The Eyeless had been very fond of, in addition to forcing old men to fight in cage matches and draining people of their blood, cutting away the dæmons of anybody who got in their way.  They claimed it made people more compliant, less troublesome.

They’d had impossibly sharp knives in the Spectre Club, cages of singing silver wire, guillotines wired tightly to whale oil tanks.  Billie had seen them cut away a man’s dæmon with her own--well, Eye.  The poor bastard had screamed as the guillotine came down between him and his pretty deer dæmon, and then he hadn’t made any sound at all.  His dæmon had gone white as ash, and she hadn’t said anything either.  The cut hadn’t killed them, but it had killed something inside them.  Their hearts, maybe, or their will. 

Billie and Tam had killed everyone in that room.  For the cut-away man it had been a mercy; for the Eyeless, Billie’d made it _last._

Not even Delilah had stooped low enough to cut dæmons away.  Billie kind of hates that there are people out in the world who have a more corrupt moral code than _Delilah_ , but people have torn each other apart for thousands of years and will probably keep doing it until the Void swallows the world, so.   All Billie can do is stop them where she finds them.

But Tam is right—the Outsider doesn’t act like a person without a dæmon.  The dæmonless are empty, hollow.  They don’t think for themselves. They’re shells of people, husks of who they used to be. 

The Outsider’s tired, but he’s not hollow.  He’s got thoughts and will and personality.  So he _must_ have a dæmon, Billie reasons.  She’s just… not with him. 

“So what?”  Billie asks Tam, wishing for a stiff drink.  Her missing fingers ache and she thinks of the Twin-Bladed Knife, of slicing into the Void like the veil between this world and the next was made of sun-warmed butter.  “We scour the Isles looking for her?”

Tam coils himself in a serpentine shrug.  “Do we?”

“We have to do something, ” Billie says, aware that Tam’s smugness is because Billie cares this much.  Billie’s tried to close herself off for years, ever since Delilah, since the raid on the Flooded District, ever since Deirdre, but she’s never been able to fool Tam. 

“If we don’t do anything, the Overseers will have him in chains by the end of the week,” Billie says.  “That’s—”

She stops herself before she says, _That’s not fair._    Of course it isn't fair.  Nothing is fair.

Billie can’t make the world fair, but maybe she can make this better.  Maybe she can help.

She likes the idea of helping. 

All her life Billie’s been an assassin, a thief, a murderer.  She still doesn’t have a problem killing anyone who gets in her way, or anyone who deserves it.  She’d killed as many of the Eyeless as she could.

But saving the Outsider was a good thing.  Billie likes the way it feels.

Tam hisses softly, thinking to himself.  “We’ll start looking for her when he wakes up,” her dæmon decides.  “After all, how hard can it be? We got him out of the Void. We defeated the Eyeless.  Somebody somewhere has seen his dæmon. It’s been four thousand years.”

Billie groans.  “Why’d you have to say that?”  she grumbles. “You’ve pretty much guaranteed that his dæmon is going to be on Pandyssia or something.”

Tam laughs, unrepentant.  “You’ve always wanted to go to Pandyssia,” he points out.  He never forgets a thing, her Tam. “Now come on. The Outsider probably won’t kill himself if we leave him alone for an hour or two.  We need to start asking questions.”

Billie heaves a sigh.  Once Tam gets his fangs into something, he doesn’t let go.  He’s like Daud that way.  She flexes her hands, feeling her fingers, flesh and metal and missing.  She’d better bring the Knife.

“We’ll have to stop at a market first,” she says.  “I have a few things to buy, and maybe a letter or two to send.”

If Billie’s going to find the Outsider’s dæmon, after all this time, she has the distinct feeling that she’s going to need help. 

 


	2. vulpes velox

 

_vulpes velox_

Billie likes Karnaca.  She likes all of Serkonos, really; it’s warm and sun-streaked and nobody looks twice at Billie, not even with her Eye and her arm and Tam curled around her throat, his bright color announcing to the world that he’s dangerous, that he’ll bite. 

She’s got a price on her head here, of course. She’s got a price on her head everywhere.  She killed an Abele all those years ago, and even though it's been nearly three decades since she put a knife through Radanis’ watery inbred eye that doesn’t mean people have forgotten.

It’s weird, Billie thinks, that putting down one cruel, weak-willed nobleman is what makes Billie so reviled.  Killing Radanis is still one of her proudest moments. He was scum. Cowardly, cruel, and too willing to kill Deirdre just because she’d been a street kid.  Billie just regrets that she didn’t get Luca too; if she’d killed him all those years ago, how much would be different?

Emily— _the Empress,_ Billie reminds herself, she _has_ to break that habit—killed Luca anyway, left him choking in his own blood on the floor of his own house. 

Tam shifts against Billie’s neck, scales rustling.

Emily Kaldwin had, as far as Billie knew, killed just two people while she’d been in Karnaca.  Kirin Jindosh, because of some offhanded comment he’d made about the degeneracy of the Kaldwin bloodline and because Emily wasn’t as patient or methodically insane as her father, and Luca Abele because he’d been a mean little shit who’d turned his own guards loose on Emily’s friends and family.

Billie can’t say that she disagrees with any of Emily’s choices.  If she’d been the one running around trying to right herself after a coup, Billie probably would’ve killed more people.  Alexandria Hypatia’s nice enough, fiercely dedicated to her patients, but she’s also a bloodthirsty mass murderer. And Breanna Ashworth—Billie knew Breanna from the old days.  Breanna had deserved a knife through the ribs at the very least.  Losing her magic is poetic, Billie supposes, but what good’s poetry?   

Billie had killed a lot of people, back in the day.  Many of them worse than Radanis Abele, and many of them better.  She’d helped kill an Empress.   She still has scars on her ribs and her arm from Corvo Attano’s dæmon, who’d thrown herself at Billie as Billie had grabbed Emily and tried to transverse away.  Attano’s dæmon had held on through three transversals, screaming and clawing at Billie like a mad thing as Billie pulled her further and further away from Attano until the shock of separation had set in and Billie had been able to kick her away. 

But the worst thing Billie Lurk has ever done, apparently, is kill Radanis Abele on the shores of the Wrenhaven.  No one ever brings up Jessamine Kaldwin or the dozens of other people Billie’s killed or helped kill. It always comes back to Radanis.

Tam shifts again.  “To be fair, nobody knows you spared the Outsider yet,” he points out dryly.  “Once the Abbey gets wind, I’m sure you’ll be reviled as the prime example of moral failure.”  

“I don’t think there’s any Stricture against breaking the Outsider out of the Void,” Billie reasons, letting Tam pull her out of her thoughts.  “Technically, we haven’t done anything wrong. We’re not even witches. We did kill a bunch of people, but they were all Eyeless. We might actually be breaking even where the Abbey is concerned.”

“You’ve got a knife that can cut between worlds,” Tam says.  Billie’s missing fingers throb at the reminder. “Let’s not try the Abbey’s patience just yet.”

Tam’s right, as usual, not that Billie has any intention of going near the Abbey.  After Vice Overseer Byrne’s disappearance, the Abbey of the Everyman has sealed itself up tight inside their fortress in the Dust District.  The war between the Howlers and the Abbey is ostensibly over, on account of the leaders of both factions mysteriously disappearing, but Emily only got rid of Paolo and Byrne.  Mindy Blanchard is running the Howlers now and while the Howlers and the Overseers both are busy licking their wounds, Billie’s sure it’s only a matter of time before the Dust District explodes into violence again.

 _We need a Duke_ , Billie thinks.  She hates that she thinks it— _she’s_ never needed a Duke—but it’s true.  Without a leader, Karnaca can’t drag itself back to its feet.  There are too many power-hungry people fighting over the scraps, too many hands grasping at the reins.  Emily promised to do whatever she could to help Karnaca.  Billie’d heard her.  Void, everyone had heard her—she’d used the Duke’s broadcasting system to do it.  The whole city had heard Emily swear to make things better.

But it’s been months since Billie took Emily back to Dunwall and set her on that last confrontation with Delilah.  There hasn’t been much word from the capital. Just rumors. Overseers dead in the streets of Dunwall and witches lurking on the rooftops.  Corvo Attano turned to stone. Unnatural fog that clung to the city and ceaseless whalesong that filled its streets.

Billie sighs and pulls her collar up, hiding Tam from the wind and prying eyes.  A warm breeze comes rolling down the street, carrying the salt and spice of Campo Seta.

“You should write to Emily,” Tam says, muffled by Billie’s jacket.  “Remind her that things are still bad down here. Between the lack of a Duke and the Eyeless…”

“I don’t think I’m in any position to write to the Empress of the Isles, Tam,” Billie mutters.  She searches the crowds as she rounds the corner and reaches the docks at last. Workers, fishermen, and whalers all throng together, shouting about the cost of today’s fish, the shortage of whales, the strange lights and sounds they’ve heard on the sea. Dæmons of every shape and size and color weave in and out of the crowds, clinging to wrists and shoulders, perched on railings, winding between the legs of their men and women.

A pair of Grand Guards are stationed on either side of a Wall of Light, watching the crowd with bored eyes.  One is a dark-skinned man with a bright parrot dæmon perched on top of his hat and the other is a pale woman with a scruffy cat curled around her heels.  Billie doesn’t recognize either of them.

“See any Overseers?”  Tam hisses.           

“Three,” Billie replies.  One Overseer at the far end of the street, inspecting a small dead whale.  One passing out literature as the crowds of fishermen press homeward for the day.  And one standing high up on the buckled tin roof of a streetside cantina, searching the crowd, metal mask glinting in the light.

All three of the Overseers have wolfhound dæmons, sleek hungry things that prowl around the edges of the crowds, lean and toothy and vicious.  All three Overseers are Hound Squad, then. Not every Overseer in Karnaca has wolfhound dæmon—not enough dæmons across the Isles settle as wolfhounds to allow it—but the Abbey favors wolfhound forms above all others, and actively seeks out children whose unsettled dæmons prefer dog shapes.  

Overseers who _do_ have wolfhound dæmons are drafted into the Hound Squad as soon as their dæmon settles.  The Hound Squads are trained to hunt heretics by smell. The Overseers are taught how to torture, how to interrogate, how to terrify, and their dæmons are taught how to rip suspected heretics limb from limb. 

The fact that all three of the Overseers watching the docks are Hounds makes Billie’s instincts itch.  With the chaos in Karnaca—the coven in the Royal Conservatory, the Eyeless, the heretical worship that’s sprung up on every street corner like weeds pushing through cobblestone—Billie would expect the Abbey’s elite to be elsewhere.  That they’re here means they’re looking for something. There’s something in Campo Seta worth their time.

"Careful,” Tam warns.  Billie ducks her head down, shifting her gait so she walks like a tired whaler coming home after a long day out at sea instead of who she really is.  She hunches her shoulders and hides her shard arm in her sleeve.

Billie misses her old coat.  Nobody would look twice at her if she was wearing a hooded coat and a gaffer’s mask, even in this heat.  Tam flicks his tongue against the side of Billie’s neck. He’s watching the Overseers too; if they pick Billie out of the crowd, he’ll notice.

Billie follows the crush of people to the western edge of Campo Seta, towards the black market.  As she walks, her gait rolling and easy, the Overseer on top of the cantina shifts, his mask glinting.  Billie tracks his gaze; a fourth Overseer emerges from a shop, a mean black wolfhound trailing at his heels.

A ripple passes down Billie’s spine.  The fourth Overseer wearing the same uniform as the rest of his brothers, but he’s unmasked, his red hair pulled back into a neat tail at his neck.  He’s Morley pale, his face burned and peeling, freckles splashed across his nose. His wolfhound dæmon is the meanest bitch Billie’s ever seen, spilled-ink black from nose to tail, her fur bristling.  She’s missing half an ear and her face is crossed with white scars. Her eyes glitter with a hungry, savage intelligence. Other dæmons scramble out of her way as she passes.

Tam hisses softly, a warning and a threat. 

Billie waits until the Overseer cuts across her path before she keeps going.  The red-haired Overseer walks over to the cantina, taps his fingers against the bar.  The Overseer on the roof inclines his head and begins to clamber down.

 _I don’t want that one behind me_ , Billie thinks to herself, angling her body so that she can keep an eye on the red-haired Overseer and his dæmon.  She doesn’t know him. Overseers that go around with their faces uncovered are high-ranking. They have no need for masks.  And Vice Overseer Byrne is gone.

 _His replacement?_    Billie wonders.  While she watches, the unmasked Overseer gathers the three others and they all start walking away, towards the Wall of Light.  Their hounds fall in behind them. The black hound leads the pack, her head low to the ground. Not even the other wolfhounds want to get too close to her.

“More questions,” Tam murmurs.  “Who is he? Why is he here?”

“More questions, and not enough answers,” Billie grumbles, quickening her pace.

She follows the signs to the black market, turning the strange Overseer over in her head. 

It’s not unusual that the Abbey would replace Byrne.  He’s been missing for a while now, and the Abbey does love its ranks and its orders, does love everything in its place.  But the fact that they’re replacing Byrne now doesn’t sit well with her.  A Morleyan is a better choice for Serkonos than a Gristolman—Morleyans have been coming to Serkonos for generations, and have integrated pretty well—but Billie’d rather not have a new Vice Overseer in the city while she’s also hiding the newly-mortal, very dæmonless Outsider in her apartment.

 _At least not without a Duke to keep him in check,_ Billie thinks.  She remembers the Overseers in Dunwall.  Burrows hadn’t made any effort to control them.  He’d encouraged their violence, even.  The Overseers are bad enough with someone holding their leash.  Without someone standing between them and the people of Karnaca… 

Billie suppresses a groan.  She and Emily—hadn’t parted on the best terms.  Emily seems content enough for now to leave Billie alone, ignoring the part Billie played in her mother’s murder, but Billie doesn’t want to push her luck by writing to her and reminding her that Billie’s alive and well. 

Karnaca needs a leader, though.  Someone to guide it, to keep everyone else in check.  Maybe Billie can pay Stilton a visit. He knows all of Karnaca’s nobles.  He might know who this new Vice Overseer is, and who might best keep him in line. 

Billie ducks into a dust-stained old building at the edge of Campo Seta and begins to climb the stairs.  Tam unwinds himself from her neck and curls around her left arm, his scales rippling. He’s bright, even against Billie’s red coat.  Billie’s face is on the wanted posters, but it’s Tam who’s known in Karnaca’s underbelly.

When Billie steps into the black market, the shopkeeper freezes.  He’s a thin man, a native Serkonan by his look and his coloring, and his pied avocet dæmon flutters up to his shoulder as soon as she spots Tam.

There’s only one other customer in the shop, and Billie blinks when she recognizes her.  Mindy Blanchard raises an eyebrow. Her dæmon is a small, sandy yellow fox, a desert creature, perched on Mindy’s shoulder like a bird.  The fox regards Tam with beady eyes. Mindy’s hand falls easily on the scissor-hilt of her sword.

“You here for me?”  Mindy asks, frankly.

Billie hasn’t had much to do with Mindy.  Most of her dealings were with Paolo. Paolo had been a shifty little man, ratlike for all his dæmon had been a long-limbed monkey, and Billie had been able to taste the black magic that hung around him like ash on the back of her tongue. He’d reminded Billie of Daud, in his way.  She’d never been sure what to do with Paolo.

Mindy’s different.  She tattoos herself with whale oil, the intricate designs inked into her skin alive and murmuring, lit up a warm and familiar purple when Billie looks at them with her Eye, but Mindy’s not magical.  She’s not Marked.

Tam hisses lazily, yawning wide so Mindy’s fox dæmon can see his fangs.

“No,” says Billie.  “Should I be?”

Mindy shrugs.  “There are people who’d pay to have me dead,” she says.  “Overseers, other gangs. Everyone knows you’re the best.”

Billie snorts and brushes Mindy’s flattery aside.  “If the Overseers come for you, they won’t use me to do it.  I’m not here for you.”

“Well alright then,” Mindy says, taking her hand off her sword.  She sticks out her hand. “Mindy. Nice to meet you. And this is [Azzo](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ee/f5/eb/eef5ebd64127bf429a2fcb94982d3c34--to-draw-swift.jpg).”  The fox dæmon flicks his ears.

Nonplussed, Billie takes her hand off the hilt of the Twin-Bladed Knife.  She extends her shard hand instead of her wounded one. “Billie,” she says. _Azzo_.  That’s a Serkonan name if I’ve ever heard one, but _Blanchard_ is Morleyan.   “But I think you already know that.”  She doesn’t give Mindy Tam’s name.

Mindy flashes her a bright grin, like thirty seconds ago she hadn’t been convinced that Billie was here to kill her.  The shopkeeper’s watching them both nervously. “You’re more famous than I am these days,” she says. “The Grand Guard’s even been taking down some of my posters to make room for yours.”

“Glad I could help,” says Billie dryly.

Mindy laughs.  “You looking for work?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Well, you ever need to make some coin, come to me,” Mindy says.  “I’ve heard of your skills, Billie Lurk. You do good work. Is it true you trained under the Knife of Dunwall?”

Billie tenses before she can help it, the memory of Daud’s stricken face in the Void too raw and real, too close to let his name pass her without flinching.  “Yes,” she says, shortly.

Mindy hums.  “Never went to Dunwall when he was around, but Paolo met him, once.  Said he was a nightmare to have as an enemy, but if you paid him well enough he was the best knife to have in your belt.”

“I’m… lower maintenance than Daud,” Billie says.  “And I’m not looking to make any enemies.”

“Most people never are,” Mindy says.  Her fox dæmon watches Billie with beady, dark eyes. 

Tam squeezes Billie’s arm.   _Ask her about the Overseer_ , he whispers, his voice a dry whisper between Billie’s ribs.   _The enemy of our enemy_...

 _Might put a knife in our back just the same_ , Billie whispers back, but does as she’s told.  “I’m not looking for coin,” she begins, “but I am looking for information.”

Mindy arches an eyebrow.  “I’m sure we could come to an arrangement,” she says. 

Billie smiles.  “You haven’t heard what kind of information I’m after.”

“You don’t know what kind of work I need done,” Mindy returns, a challenging tilt to her chin.  Tam’s amusement curls through Billie like warm smoke.

 _Stop that,_ Billie thinks at him.   _We can’t like her.  We might have to kill her, one of these days._

“Fair enough,” says Billie.  She thinks for a moment, turning over her options.  On one hand, Billie and Mindy are both solidly aligned against the Abbey of the Everyman.  Mindy’s not magical, but she carves bone charms and tattoos herself and her customers with whale oil and arcane symbols.  She’ll keep up Paolo’s vendetta against the Abbey.

The Abbey’s been after Billie since she was ten years old and accepted the Arcane Bond from Daud.  And she’s got the Outsider on her couch.  The god of the Void, the monster in the Abbey’s nightmares.  The Abbey won’t just kill Billie, if they ever get a hold of her.  They’ll—well.

What they’ll do doesn’t bear thinking about. 

On the other hand, Billie doesn’t know Mindy.  Billie can look after herself, but the Outsider’s vulnerable.  Billie doesn’t know if Mindy would try and take him, try and wring power out of him, try and make him a god again. 

Billie’s not going to risk his life.  At least, not without asking first. 

 _I wonder if the Outsider knows anything about Mindy,_ she wondered.  She’ll have to ask when she gets home. 

A temporary working arrangement might pay off, though. 

“I need to pick up a few things,” Billie finally says, coming to a decision.  “And then we can find somewhere more appropriate to discuss business.”

Mindy grins.  “Sounds like a plan, Billie Lurk.”

Another warm curl drifts through Billie’s belly.  Tam laughs, scales rustling. He uncoils and leaves Billie’s arm, winding his way down to the ground, where he flexes his scales and raises his head up off the floor.  His tongue flickers.

Mindy’s dæmon leaps down from her shoulder and goes to introduce himself to Tam.  Billie turns to the shopkeeper and buys a few things—darts and mines, mostly, a bone charm that catches her eye.  She doesn’t pick up any contracts. Billie figures that finding a dæmon that’s been missing for four thousand years is a job best worked without any other distractions. 

While Billie pays, she half-hears Tam introducing himself to Azzo, putting away his fangs.  Azzo murmurs back just as softly.

When Billie turns back around, Tam and Azzo are touching noses, a polite greeting among dæmons, and Mindy’s watching them carefully.  She looks unconcerned, but Billie can see her hand drifting towards her sword again.  Billie hides a smile.

It’s good to know that Mindy’s got an eye for danger underneath all of her bluster.  Billie doesn’t doubt that Azzo can fight, if he’s pressed, but there’s not much he can do against Tam. 

“To neutral ground, then?”  Mindy asks.

“There’s a taberna down the street,” Bille offers, bending down to scoop Tam up.  He winds himself around her forearm, settling his head against the backs of her knuckles again.  Her missing fingers pulse, a slow, hot pain.

“Anaya’s?  I know it,” Mindy says, nodding.  “Sounds good to me.”  She rounds on the shopkeeper. “Hey, Zami, you remember what we talked about, okay?  Yanyu’s gonna come by next week and if you don’t have what you owe, she’s not gonna be happy.”

The shopkeeper nods vigorously, his avocet dæmon fluttering around his head. 

Billie smiles.  “Settling your accounts?”  she asks mildly, letting Mindy leave the shop first.  Mindy, to her credit, doesn’t balk at having Billie at her back.  Her fox dæmon trails along behind them, his ears twitching thoughtfully. 

“Settling Paolo’s,” Mindy says, expression sour.  “He left me in the lurch. Half the city owes us, uh.   Taxes. ” 

“I heard Paolo disappeared,” says Billie.  “I didn’t realize it was permanent.”

Mindy looks at Billie sharply, eyes glittering.  “So you didn’t have anything to do with it?” she demands. 

“No,” says Billie.  She’s being mostly honest, too.  Billie didn’t have anything to do with Paolo ending up in a box bound for the Pandyssian coast—that was all Emily.  Billie was just the boatman.

(She has… strange dreams now, about Paolo.  About a lot of things. Dreams of blood running down her face, her arm missing at the elbow.  Dreams of a life Billie is living just a few feet to the left of this one, unseen but still there, caught in the corner of her Eye.)

Tam’s tongue flickers against Billie’s knuckles.  He’s warning her to tread carefully.

“You know who did?”  Mindy asks.

Billie shrugs.  She and Mindy step outside of the black market and back into the sunny, windy warmth of Campo Seta.  A quick glance tells Billie that the Overseers are gone. An Elite Guard with a lion dæmon prowls around the edges of the crowd, but she doesn’t see Billie or Mindy. 

“I might,” Billie says.  “But I won’t tell you.”

“Is he alive?”

Billie sees something in Mindy’s face, something fierce and furious and angry, something that throws Billie fifteen years into the past.  Billie doesn’t know Mindy, not really, doesn’t know her history or her heart, but she knows that Mindy loves Paolo like Billie loved Daud.  It’s a crooked love, tangled up in a hundred complications, but it’s there.

“I know he was alive when he left Karnaca,” Billie says, thinking of Daud asleep in the sun aboard the _Dreadful Wale_ , thinking of memorizing the lines of Daud’s face, of holding all of the pieces of her heart in her hands and feeling like maybe, just maybe, she could earn some kind of peace if she fought at Daud’s side one more time. 

 _I know you’re still my Billie_ , Daud had said.   [Tavor](https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w728-h425-c728x425/upload/2e/5f/18/eurasian-eagle-owl.jpg) had been perched on his knee, too tired to fly, but her eyes had been bright and keen.  Billie had laughed at him when he’d said it, and then she’d crept off to cry, hot tears stinging her one good eye. 

Tam sighs against Billie’s wrist.  His grief echoes against hers, sharper than any knife. 

“Know where he went?”  Mindy says, fighting to hide her relief. 

“Farther than you can reach to get him back,” says Billie, gently.

Mindy takes that blow like a Whaler.  She lets it hit, gives herself a moment to feel the pain, and the soldiers through it.  “Alright then,” she says. “I appreciate your honesty, Billie Lurk. C’mon. Anaya’s is right around the corner.” 

Billie lets Mindy take the lead.  Azzo slips past Billie’s heels, careful not to brush against her legs, and Mindy bends to pick him up and set him back on her shoulder.  When they round the corner, Billie hears Anaya’s before she sees it. Music spills out into the street and the smell of spiced wine hangs in the air.  Fishermen and dock wives mingle underneath umbrellas scattered around the front of Amaya’s Taberna and musicians croon at the crowd, half a dozen songs overlapping each other like waves on the shore. 

Mindy walks through the crowd without a care; people part for her almost unconsciously, making sure they don’t look at her or her dæmon too carefully.  Bille follows in her wake, keeping her head down. Tam doesn’t hide himself, but he doesn’t move either, holding himself still so he doesn’t alarm anyone.

“I’ve got a room in the back,” Mindy says above the chaos of the evening crowd.  “Want anything to drink?”

Billie very much wants some of whatever smells like _ciruelas_ and amaretto, fragrant and sweet with the promise of a good time, but she doesn’t like to drink and work.  “I’m good for now,” she says. “Lead the way.”

Mindy winds through the crowd with her dæmon perched on her shoulder like an overgrown bird.  Billie follows.

“Think she’s leading us into a trap?”  she asks Tam, voice low. He flickers his tongue out, considering. 

“No,” Tam says immediately.  “We can trust her.”

Billie doubts that, but Tam’s always been good at judging character.  He’d liked Emily Kaldwin immediately and hated Delilah, though that might have been because Delilah’s dæmon was a good deal bigger than Tam, and had managed to pin Tam underneath his claws the first time they’d met. 

“We can trust her,” Tam repeats. 

Billie nods.  She still has the Twin-Bladed Knife in case Mindy tries anything.  If worst comes to worst, Billie can cut sideways through the Void and get away. 

Mindy leads Billie and Tam to a small, bare room behind the bustling bar.  A frazzled Serkonan woman with a massive turtle dæmon—Anaya, if Billie had to guess—nods at Mindy and goes back to slinging drinks. 

Inside the back room, Mindy pulls a chair away from a chipped table and flops down, lacing her hands together behind her head.  It’s a studied gesture, designed to make Mindy look casual and at ease.

Billie appreciates the showmanship, if nothing else. 

“So,” says Mindy, while her dæmon hops down onto the table.  “What business?”

Bille pulls out the other chair and sits too, letting Tam slither onto the table where he can talk to Azzo face-to-face.  “I need some information,” Billie says. “And it sounds to me like you need some help.”

Mindy grins crookedly.  “You could say that,” she says.  “It’s no secret that we Howlers are short-handed.  We lost a lot of guys to the Overseers. Some to the Eyeless, too.” 

“You don’t have to worry about the Eyeless anymore.”  Billie hadn’t quite managed to kill all of them, but she’d definitely made an excellent start.

Mindy inclines her head.  “They had the Knife of Dunwall, I heard,” she says.  “Is that why you went after them?”

“It’s why I started.  I finished for… other reasons.” 

The Eyeless didn’t kill Daud.  They probably helped, with the chains and the cages and the bone charms, but they didn't kill him.  He just—died. A stiff wind had killed him, maybe, or maybe the sight of the sun in the sky had finally lulled him to sleep.  Billie couldn’t rage at the wind or the sky any more than she could rage at the sea.  The Eyeless, however, she’d been able to do something about.

“Fair enough.  What information do you need?”

 _Careful,_ Tam warns. 

 _You just told me I could trust her,_ Billie grumbles back.  She wishes sometimes that Tam would just say what he means, but that’s not his way.  “I want to know everything the Howlers know about the Overseers who are still left in the Dust District,” Billie says.  She hesitates. “And I’m looking for a missing dæmon.”

Azzo looks between Mindy and Billie so fast that Billie almost misses it.  If Tam wasn’t a predator, she would have.

 _They know something_ , she thinks.  She can feel Tam’s fangs flexing in his mouth. 

“And,” Billie says, because if she’s in for copper she’s in for gold, “I need to get a letter to Empress Emily Kaldwin without the Royal Spymaster catching on.”

Mindy whistles between her teeth.  “Shit,” she says. “You don’t work small, do you?”

Billie shrugs with one shoulder.  “What do you need?” she asks.

“Help,” Mindy says bluntly.  “And a lot of it. I’m down twenty Howlers and Paolo.  The Overseers are regrouping.  If we’re gonna keep the Dust District, I need help getting through this storm.” 

“I’m not looking to get involved in a gang war,” Billie says.  She’d seen enough of those in Dunwall.

“So don’t get caught,” says Azzo.  His voice is higher and lighter than Billie thought it’d be, and she realizes with a jolt that Azzo is _female_.   Tam rustles his scales, amused. 

She looks at Mindy with new eyes.  People who have dæmons the same sex as themselves are rare.  Blessed, some say. Billie doesn’t hold to superstition, but Deirdre’s dæmon Treasa had been female too.  She can’t help the comparison now; Mindy’s not Deirdre, but if Billie looks at her sideways she can almost see Deirdre hiding in the edges of Mindy’s face.  Morleyan cheekbones, pale hair, freckles scattered across her nose.         

Tam shivers. 

“I’m not sure getting between you and the Abbey is worth the information I’m after,” Billie says, dragging her thoughts back in.  Sentimentality is a good way to get killed. Mindy’s not Deirdre. She’s not.

“So how about we start small?”  Mindy reasons, undeterred. “There’s a shipment of whale oil coming in tonight.  With the ban across the Isles the stuff’s been hell to get my hands on. It’s coming through the lower docks.  Word is there’s gonna be Hound Squad on the shipment to take it to the Abbey.”

“And you want the shipment.” 

“I do,” says Mindy.  “Everybody in the city who’s less than devout wants some.  Whale oil’s good for rituals, you know.”

“And for tattoos,” Billie says, studying the patterns on Mindy’s arms.  She’s glad she decided not to tattoo herself inside the Red Carnelian. Tattoos aren’t really Billie’s style, though they do look good on Mindy. 

“Who says they’re not the same thing?”  Mindy grins. “Yeah, I want the shipment.  If you wanted to kill some Hounds while you were at it, I wouldn’t be opposed.  There’s been too many of ‘em prowling around lately.”

 _Tam?  Thoughts_?   Billie asks. 

Her dæmon is quiet for a moment.   _Agree,_ he finally says.   _We need information, and help.  And if Mindy can get a letter to Emily…_  

“I’ll get your whale oil if you give me information and get a letter to Emily,” Billie says.  She holds out her maimed hand for Mindy to shake. Mindy does, gingerly, minding Billie’s missing fingers. 

“Deal,” says Mindy. 

Billie grins, shark-like.  “You pay half now, the other half after I’ve done the job.” 

Azzo barks a laugh.  “Is that standard policy?”  she asks.

Billie shrugs.  “It is for the desperate,” she says.  “So. What do you know about a new Vice Overseer?”  Billie asks.

Mindy cocks her head to the side, considering.  “There’s been rumors,” she says. “Names tossed around, movement in the Dust District, but the Abbey in Dunwall’s too much of a mess to actually name a new Vice Overseer.  The Witch-Empress slaughtered them. I’ve heard that Holger Square doesn’t even exist anymore.  Delilah killed everyone inside and gave the building over to witches and flowers and all kinds of other weird shit.”

“There’s no Abbey in Dunwall anymore?”  Billie’s surprised despite herself. She’s won battles with the Abbey before, but in her mind they’re always—well, nearly invincible.  Memories of the Flooded District are always bubbling just under the surface. Guilt and grief and blood under Billie’s fingernails. Bodies in the streets.  Poor little Pavel dead in his bed, gutted with two of the other novices, Rosin lying where she’d fallen trying to protect the kids from Overseer blades. Daud slaughtering his way across the rooftops when he hadn’t spilled a drop of blood in Slaughterhouse Row or the Legal District, Tavor falling like a star from the sky, ripping out eyes, tearing open throats. 

 _I know you’re still my Billie,_ Daud had said. 

“That’s what I’ve heard,” says Mindy.  “There’s still Overseers in Gristol, but most of what’s left of their men have gone running back to Whitecliff.  The Abbey in Caulkenny’s been running things.”

“Did Caulkenny send a new Vice Overseer?”  Billie thinks of the red-haired man and his black hound dæmon.  He could definitely be Morleyan; he has their look about him, and red hair’s not common outside of Morley.

“Not that I’ve heard,” Mindy says, leaning forward.  “Why?”

Billie hesitates again, her hard-earned instincts and natural inclination towards secrecy warring with her business sense _.   In for copper, in for gold_ , she reminds herself.  “I saw a man in Campo Seta today,” she says.  “Some Hound Squad were out. Their leader was a red-haired Morleyan with a black wolfhound dæmon.  He wasn’t wearing a mask.”

Mindy sucks her teeth thoughtfully.  “I don’t know him,” she says. “But for you, I can find out.  Get me that whale oil and I’ll see what I can dig up. You wanted to know about a missing dæmon, too?” 

“I do,” says Billie.  Tam winds his way back up to Billie’s shoulders.  She should probably start making her way back to the boarded-up apartment she’s been calling home.  The Outsider will be awake soon, and Billie’s probably going to need his help with this whale oil job. 

“What form?”

Billie shrugs.  “I don’t know,” she admits.  “My… employer hasn’t been very clear.  But she is missing.  Separated from her man.  No matter what form she’s in she’s going to attract attention.” 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Mindy says again, though this time she sounds more dubious.  “And if you get me my whale oil I’ll even send a letter to the Empress. Can’t promise the Royal Spymaster isn’t going to see it, though.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”  With Tam safely back around her shoulders, Billie stands up and nods at Mindy.  “Where should I meet you, once I have the whale oil?”

“Oh, I like your confidence.”  Mindy grins widely. “You know the old cider distillery, off of Maray and Crosswind?  Bring it there. I’ll be waiting.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” Billie says, and Displaces away, Mindy’s delighted noise ringing in her ears.  Daud always taught the Whalers to use their Arcane Bond sparingly, but sometimes a client had to know what they were dealing with. 

“You just wanted to show off,” Tam hisses, deeply amused. 

Here, where Mindy can’t see her, Billie lets herself smile.  “Maybe I did,” she says. “Now come on. Let’s go home.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that I should probably put in the meanings of everyone's dæmon's form! Otherwise it just seems kind of silly, doesn't it? 
> 
> Tam - "whole," a Dinnik's viper. Serpents are symbols of death, deceit, evil, et cetera, but they're also powerful symbols of rebirth, healing, and cycles. I chose a Dinnik's viper for Billie specifically because they are venomous and deadly but very beautiful, and I think underneath all of her Ron Swanson-ness and snark Billie has a very beautiful heart. I mean, she's friends with _rats_.
> 
> Tavor (Daud's dæmon)- "fracture," a Eurasian eagle-owl. Owls are traditionally symbols of wisdom and knowledge--and we knew that Daud was a nosy fuck--but are also symbols of mysteries, night, and magic. Owls are incredibly skilled hunters as well. 
> 
> Azzo (Mindy Blanchard's dæmon)- "noble at birth," a swift fox. Foxes are trickster symbols, known for their cleverness and cunning, and are also symbols of subtlety, creativity, and luck. Azzo is female. In Phillip Pullman's universe, same-sex dæmons are very rare. It's been speculated that people with same-sex dæmons are gay, but I kind of flat out reject this, based on the fact that gay people aren't really rare, and implying that there are so few gay people that it's a surprise to "see" one in the wild has always rubbed me, a gay person, the wrong way. 
> 
> As we meet more dæmons, I'll add them to this list. 
> 
> Some general worldbuilding notes: in Pullman's trilogy, people are often grouped together by the forms their dæmons  
> take. People with dog dæmons are usually servants, all of the witches have birds, and there's a unit of Tartar warriors in which every warrior has a wolf dæmon. Thinking about the application of that kind of .... social stratification based on dæmon form? usually gives me a headache, but I think such a method of self- or societal segregation works well for a group of religious fanatics like the Overseers. 
> 
> Creating an entire fighting force in which every member has to have a certain kind of dæmon seems wildly unsustainable, especially since we know a lot of Overseers are recruited (or like, stolen) as children, before their dæmon would settle. You can indoctrinate people all you like, but the core of who a person is is not so easy to fuck around with. FORCING someone's dæmon to settle in a desired form wouldn't work. 
> 
> HOWEVER, a smaller group inside that large fighting force, made up of elite soldiers who have received extra training and have dæmons--read: personalities/souls/whatever--that align closely to a set of principles and traits imposed by an authority? Much more feasible. So I decided that in this universe, within the Abbey of the Everyman there's a "Hound Squad," a highly-trained, elite group of Overseers who all have wolfhound dæmons. Mostly because I love those weird crocodile dogs. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. canis familiaris

_canis familiaris_

 

The Outsider is awake when Billie makes it back to her bolt-hole apartment in the Lower Cyria District.  He’s eating a tin of jellied eels with an expression Billie sees more often on miners climbing down into the deep.  Resolutely determined, and maybe just a bit fucking terrified.

Billie sighs.  The Outsider’s only been alive again for a few days, so she’s not _surprised_ that he hasn’t quite figured out how to be human, but sometimes Billie feels like she’s out of her depth.  She never been much of a teacher.  “There’s bread in the top cabinet,” she says.  “You like bread, right?”

The Outsider sighs mournfully and puts down his tin of eels.  “Bread is fine,” he says, in the tone of voice some people use when saying things like, “Losing just the one leg is fine,” or “Being impaled by this harpoon is fine.” 

“Fruit?”  Billie hazards.  “Pears, maybe?”

At that the Outsider brightens a little.  “Pears,” he says, tasting the word. He’s arranged on top of a pile of crates like a bird hunched over a particularly shiny, interesting object, his long limbs drawn in and carefully arranged. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Billie says.  She leaves Tam on the table in front of the Outsider and goes to rifle through the apartment’s cabinets.  She finds a couple of pears in reasonably good condition, buffs one on her sleeve, and hands it over.

“Eat it like an apple,” she instructs, unsure whether or not the Outsider knows how to eat an apple. 

The Outsider eyes the pear and takes a bite.  At once his pained expression smooths out, and he nods, decisively.  “I like pears,” he says.

“Good to know.”  Bille cracks a grin and helps herself to the other pear. “No jellied eels, but pears are good.” 

They finish breakfast in silence.  Well, it’s more like a snack for Billie--she’s been up all day and has eaten here and there while she’s been running around--but the Outsider looks like he just woke up. 

“So, I made a new friend today,” Billie says conversationally.  “Mindy Blanchard, of the Howlers.”

The Outsider hums.  “A good friend to have,” he says.  “And a dangerous enemy. I appeared to Mindy once in a dream and her dæmon tried to eat me.”

Billie thinks of the clever little fox dæmon and smiles.  “I can see that,” she says. Tam laughs, coiling himself up so he’s eye level with Billie and the Outsider. 

“Were you going to Mark her?”  Billie asks.

“No,” says the Outsider.  “But I thought I’d say hello.” 

“Fair enough.”  Billie wants coffee, or maybe some whisky, but she doesn’t have any here.  She’ll have to buy some, next time she’s in the markets. Maybe the Outsider will like whisky. 

“What does Mindy Blanchard have to say?”  the Outsider asks. He always does that, addresses people by their full names.  Mindy Blanchard, Billie Lurk, Emily Kaldwin. The only people Billie’s heard him call by their given names are Daud, who never had a family name, and Corvo Attano, who the Outsider calls _Corvo_ with a surprising amount of affection.   

“She’s willing to trade for information we need,” Billie explains.  “About the Abbey’s movements, and about any dæmons walking around without a man.”

“What are you going to give her in return?”  The Outsider doesn’t react to the mention of his dæmon.  Billie hasn’t been able to pull much out of him on that front.  He’s admitted that he had a dæmon once, long ago before he died, and that she was female, and that she had been settled, and that she still lives somewhere out in the world.

But anything else--what form she’s taken, what her name is, what she looks like, where she might be--he’s keeping to himself. 

“I’m stealing whale oil,” Billie says, finishing her pear.  “From the Abbey, tonight. Wanna come? I could use a lookout.”

The Outsider blinks slowly.  “Alright,” he finally says, after a moment of thinking.  “But only if we get more pears, first.”

Billie grins.  “Deal,” she says. 

She and the Outsider take to the streets as the sun is starting to set.  The Outsider looks human enough—his eyes are bright green now, not black all the way through, and in proper clothes he looks like any other twenty-something young man in the Dust District.  Billie’s told him to touch his pockets as often as he can, to make it seem like he’s got a small dæmon, an insect or a mouse or a tiny bird, tucked away, and with as long as no one looks too closely, he looks and feels like an ordinary man. 

Standing too close to him for too long makes salt gather on the tip of Billie’s tongue, makes the air heavy around her and fills her bones with whalesong echoes, but shouldering through the crowd, that’s not a problem. 

Billie swipes a few pears for the Outsider to nibble on as they walk.  They wander through Campo Seta, through Aventa and into Lower Cyria, mindful of Grand Guards who watch the crowds and Overseers who prowl along the fringes. 

And when they get near enough to the Abbey’s outpost, Billie takes hold of the Outsider’s arm and gently Displaces them up, up and up until they’re perched high and out of sight, looking down at the outpost below. 

The Abbey’s new outpost in Lower Cyria is much like their outpost in Aventa, but smaller and dirtier.  All of the windows are draped with the Abbey’s mark. A statue of High Overseer Holger has been put up in a cramped courtyard facing away from the outpost’s double doors.  A music box rumbles over a loudspeaker, sparking a sharp ache behind Billie’s teeth.

She counts six Overseers on the ground.  Four of them have wolfhound dæmons, their edges sharp and hungry.  Three of the hounds are muddy water brown and the fourth is ashy grey.  The other two Overseers have a long black serpent and a scruffy white owl between them. 

With her Eye, Billie can see more Overseers inside the outpost.  Three on the first floor, their dæmons blurry, indistinct shapes at this distance, two on the second, and four on the third. 

Billie hisses between her teeth.  Fifteen Overseers. She’s handled more, before.  But Billie wants to do this quietly .  Stealing a bit of whale oil from under the Abbey’s nose is one thing.  Killing fifteen Overseers in the middle of Lower Cyria is a declaration of war. 

 _And I have the Outsider with me_ , Bille thinks.  She’s not dragging him through a warzone.              

At her side, the Outsider crouches, studying the Overseers below.  Twilight has turned the courtyard red and ruddy. To Billie it feels like an omen. 

 _Red sky at night, whaler’s delight._    She’s not a Whaler anymore, but this is Whaler’s work. 

“Know anything about any of them?”  Billie asks, gesturing down at the Overseers below.  Tam rustles against her skin.

The Outsider cants his head.  “I don’t know everything about everyone, you know,” he says, sounding amused.  “There are millions of lives shining like stars in the Void. Even I could not watch and name them all.” 

“But…?”  Billie says, raising her eyebrow.  She’s getting used to the Outsider’s way of speaking, now.  Without those fathomless black eyes of his, he can’t bluff for shit. 

The Outsider inclines his head.  “But,” and he points down below, first to the Overseer with the grey wolfhound dæmon and then to the one with the long black serpent, “the man with the grey hound is called Brother Wenyan, and the man with the owl is no man at all.” 

“Will they help me?”  Billie asks.

The Outsider shrugs.  “They might,” he says.  “Brother Wenyan is a heretic.  His belief in me is so strong it burns taste of whale oil into the air around him.  And the other has hidden her whole life. Shine a light on her, and see what she will do to scuttle back to the shadows.” 

Tam sighs.  “Less cryptic, please,” he says, poking his head out from under Billi’s collar.  “What’s her name?”

The Outsider looks at them, uncomprehending. 

“He means,” Billie says, reaching for patience, “that if you could offer something a bit more solid, we’d appreciate it.  We’re not your Marked. You don’t have to play games with us.”

“I’m not playing games,” the Outsider retorts, petulant.  “I’m—” he breaks off, frustrated, and drags a hand through his hair.  It’s a very human gesture, and Billie softens a little. 

“In the Void,” the Outsider begins, slowly, “nothing is solid.   The Void is a sea and possibilities break over it like waves, one after another.  There is no solid ground. I don’t know what the Overseers will do if you confront them, Billie Lurk.  I don’t know what you will do.  I can no more predict your actions than I can predict the moment a wave breaks into foam.”

“Alright.”  Billie turns that over in her head, thinking hard.

 _Sounds like a language barrier,_ Tam thinks between Billie’s ears.  She remembers Daud cursing in Pandyssian, the language strange and rolling.  She remembers Corvo Attano’s sharp cry in Old Serkonan as Billie dragged his daughter and his dæmon away. 

Billie’s never had a tongue for languages.  Not that it matters much; there are some pockets of people here and there who speak Old Serkonan amongst themselves, who whisper in Tyvish behind their hands, but _everyone_ speaks Gristolish.  Pandyssian is a tongue known only to its people; not even Daud shared any of its words, hoarding them close to his chest, holding the words as tightly as he’d held onto his dæmon.

Fortunately for the Outsider, Billie was a sailor for fifteen years.  She knows the ways of the sea, even if she doesn’t know its language. With some luck, she can translate.

“Possibilities are waves,” Billie says slowly.  “But waves are guided by wind, by currents, by the shape of the coast and by islands buried under the water.  You can’t predict the waves, but you can learn where the currents are. You can map the shape of the coast.”

The Outsider nods.  “You can,” he says. 

“So where’s the shore?”  Billie asks.

The Outsider half-closes his eyes.  He’s understood her, Billie can tell.  He knows what she wants, what she needs.  Whether or not he’ll tell her is still up in the air, but he is thinking, trying to frame a god’s knowledge into a man’s words, so BIllie sits back on her heels and waits. 

“Brother Wenyan,” he says, “has lived his entire life on the ragged edge of power.  His mother was a witch and his father was one of mine.”

 _His father was Marked_ , Billie realizes. 

“The Overseers killed Wenyan’s mother and his father and stole him away,” the Outsider continues.  “He has not ever forgotten the blood. He… follows stories of witch-lights and strange flowers, listens for whalesong and singing bones, and saves all he can from his brothers.  Witches, Eyeless, washerwomen with bones tucked into their sleeves, children who dream of whales in the sky.  He saves them all. He would rather burn than serve, but understands the value of an inside man.”

 _Compassion,_ Billie thinks, mapping out this Brother Wenyan in her mind’s eye.  Compassion, determination, no small bit of cunning and cleverness. He’s Hound Squad, so he’s strong and fierce and trusted by other Oversees.  He knows how to sniff out magic. But if he saves heretics, if he saves them, he can be persuaded to help Billie. 

She is, after all, a peerless heretic.  She just has to get Brother Wenyan alone and convince him to help. 

“And the other?”  Tam asks, leaving Billie to her planning.  “The woman pretending to be a man?”

“Her name is Mairenn,” the Outsider murmurs, his eyes still half-closed as he wades through his memories.  “She is a true believer. She survived the Rat Plague and once saw Corvo fall from the sky like a star.  He terrified her. When the Plague ended she changed her name to Moran and cut off all her hair. She loved the sword too much to join the Oracular Order.  Now she loves only the Strictures, and the conviction that what she’s doing is right. Her brothers would burn her for a witch if they found her out, and she would tie herself to the stake.”

Billie nods.  She knows instinctively that there won’t be time to convince both Wenyan and Mairenn to help her.  The whale oil is supposed to arrive two hours after sunset, and the light’s fading fast.

“Mairenn we’d probably have to blackmail,” Billie says.  “And blackmail is messy, unreliable. Chances are as soon as we turned our backs on her she’d try to kill us.  Wenyan’s our best bet.”

The Outsider blinks at Billie.  “I trust your judgement,” he says, mild.  “What do you need me to do?”

“Keep watch,” Billie says. 

The Outsider’s expression goes mulish.  Billie resists the urge to roll her good eye. 

“Tomorrow I’ll teach you how to shoot a gun,” she says.  “But right now I need you to stay up here and out of trouble.  What do you think the Hound Squad will do if they get ahold of you?  Touching your pocket won’t convince them you have a dæmon with you. They’ll notice she’s missing and tear you apart.” 

The Outsider’s scowl deepens, but he doesn’t argue.  “Fine,” he says. “I will stay up here and… keep watch.”

Billie relaxes.  “Next time you can come with me,” she says.  “I want to do this quietly, with as little bloodshed as we can manage.” 

“Agreed,” says the Outsider. 

Billie resists the urge to pat him on the shoulder like Daud used to do to the apprentices, and Displaces herself to the top of a streetlight looking down over the courtyard to get away from the feeling. 

The Hound Squad patrols the yard in pairs.  Wenyan and his wolfhound are paired with a solid, stout Overseer whose brown hound trails behind the Wenyan’s grey and keeps pausing to snuffle at rat-holes in the walls and under the benches.  

Bille crouches down, considering. 

“Tam, ideas?”  she whispers.

Tam rustles against her skin.  “We could cause a distraction,” he says.  “But then the others might come investigate too.”

For half a moment, Billie wished that she had Daud’s abilities again, or Emily’s.  Emily would have been able to twist into a shadow and draw Wenyan away from his partner, and Daud would have been able to Pull on Wenyan’s dæmon, drawing his attention without catching the notice of any of the others. 

But Billie isn’t Marked—and that’s fortunate, because the ancient music drifting from the loudspeakers would have frozen her abilities anyway—and her magic isn’t really magic.  Her gifts come from the Eye, from the Knife at her hip and the Void caught in between the spaces of her shard arm.  She has nothing to fear from the ancient music.

Billie Displaces down to a balcony, pressing back into the shadows.  From here she could jump inside the outpost and clear the third floor of its Overseers, but she wants to talk to Brother Wenyan before she starts purging the outpost.

“Behind us,” Tam whispers, his tongue cool against Billie’s throat.  “If we can get him into the apartment behind us, we should be able to talk without any of the others noticing.” 

Billie turns that over in her head.  “Good idea,” she says, and Displaces across the courtyard into the third floor of the outpost.  There’s one Overseer sitting at a desk with his back to the window; the other Overseers are in other rooms beyond this one, and as long as Billie’s very quiet, they won’t notice if she nabs this one. 

The Overseer’s dæmon is a hawk.  It’s easy for Billie to lunge soundlessly across the room and wrap her arm around the Overseer’s neck.  His mask bites into her cheek. Tam flashes from her shoulders faster than she can follow, coils himself around the hawk dæmon, and squeezes until she slumps over in his grip. 

“Got him?”  Billie asks.  She strips the unconscious Overseer of his mask and his uniform with quick, impersonal hands, leaving it all in a pile on the floor.  Thomas told her about Daud doing this, once, not long after Billie left. She would have paid to see that. _Overseer Daud._

Tam grips the hawk dæmon in his jaws, mindful of his fangs.  He nods.

Billie pulls the Twin-Bladed Knife from her hip, her maimed hand tingling, and cuts sideways out of the world. 

At once the cold dark-light of the Void spills out to meet her.  Billie widens the gap, peering into the other side. The Void is still and quiet, singing only faintly to itself, and she doesn’t see anything that would devour the Overseer if she leaves him on a rock in the middle of the Void for an hour or so.  Billie steps through the window into the Void, dragging the Overseer with her, and lays him down.

Tam follows, arranging the hawk dæmon so that she’s at her man’s throat. 

Billie looks around. 

The Void looks the same as it did before.  Grey and white and black, bare rock, ribbons of water that flow up into nothing, great shapes that swim against the featureless sky.  A low light burns on the horizon.

Tam slithers up Billie’s leg and loops himself around her shoulders again, pressing close to her jaw.  “I hate it here,” he murmurs, his scales bristling.

Billie holds tightly onto the Knife.  She doesn’t know how it works, the Twin-Bladed Knife, only that it took two of her fingers and allows her to cut doors between the cold grey world of the Void and her own world.  It protects her from the monstrous things that stalk the rocky islands and can cut even the wind.

She doesn’t want to lose it. 

“Me too,” Billie says, mouth dry.  She turns away, leaving the Overseer unconscious on the rock.  “We’ll come back for him when all this is done,” she tells Tam. 

Her dæmon nods.  He doesn’t like the idea of leaving anyone lost in the Void any more than she does.  They both think of Daud, of the holes eaten through him, the expression on his face, and turn away from the memory.

Billie slips back through the window into her own world and feels for the edges of the cut she made.  The Outsider showed her how to do this, in the only active teaching moment he ever took. The rest of it Billie had to figure out on her own, but he showed her how to use the Twin-Bladed Knife. 

Billie finds the edges of the window with her maimed hand.  Her Eye helps, shows her the edges like the raw seams of a wound, but her shard arm can’t feel them.  One-handed (and three-fingered) Billie draws the window together, shrinking it until it’s only a prick of Void light in the room.  She’ll be able to find it again and pull the Overseer out, but nobody else will notice.

Satisfied, Billie tugs on the Overseer’s uniform, fitting the mask over her face.  Semblance would probably be easier, but she doubts she could hold on to someone else’s face for long enough to convince Wenyan to follow her into the abandoned apartment. 

“How do I look?”  Billie asks Tam.

Her dæmon snorts.  “Convincing enough,” he says, and burrows beneath the coat’s collar.  Billie adjusts the uniform so that it covers all of her metal arm and strolls out into the hallway. 

She passes another Overseer and nods at him.  His dæmon is a crow who regards Billie with beady eyes for a moment and then turns away, convinced. 

Billie grins behind the mask.  Her disguise ought to work, then. 

She makes her way through the rest of the outpost, marking the locations of the other Overseers.  Two of the nine Overseers in this building are Hounds, but the rest are just ordinary Overseers with birds and cats and beetles for dæmons.  None of them give Billie a second look.

She walks out into the courtyard, marking the patrolling Overseers.  Mairenn and her owl are lounging against the statue of Holger. The man with the black serpent dæmon has left the yard.  And Wenyan is circling with his partner, his dæmon at his heels.

Billie waits for a moment, Tam coiled tight around her shoulders, and calls out to him.  “Brother Wenyan,” she calls, deepening her voice. “You’re wanted next door.” She jerks her head towards the apartment building.  “Something about a security risk?”

Wenyan stops in his tracks.  “I checked that building myself just an hour ago,” he says, his frown clear even through his ghoulish mask. 

Up above, Billie can see the Outsider crouched on the ledge, watching with keen eyes. 

She shrugs.  “I’m just letting you know what I was told,” she says. 

Wenyan huffs.  “Did Brother Barnabas send you?  That old hagfish is never satisfied…”  Wenyan’s dæmon bumps up against his leg and Wenyan subsides, muttering under his breath.  “Come with me,” Wenyan instructs, tone sharp. “You can tell Barnabas yourself that everything is perfectly secure.” 

Bille shrugs again, to seem unbothered and above Wenyan and Barnabas’ quarrel.  “Fine,” she says. “But if I’m late for my patrol, you can explain to Brother Barnabas that you kept me.” 

Wenyan keeps grumbling, turning away from his partner and striding across the courtyard, dæmon close behind. 

Billie follows, her disguise sold by Wenyan’s easy acceptance of her presence.  She follows close enough that she can catch Wenyan if he turns on her, but not so close that she looks suspicious. 

She can hear a bone charm whispering somewhere on Wenyan’s person and a quick look with her Eye tells her that he carries it underneath his clothes, tucked close to his heart.   The grey wolfhound peers up at Billie, her eyes sharp and dark. Billie doesn’t react, but Tam rustles underneath her stolen coat, reassuring the wolfhound that he’s there, that Billie is whole. 

She lets Wenyan lead her to the apartment building’s ground-level entrance. 

“That door is barred and blocked,” Wenyan says, pointing across the hall to another door that leads out into the streets of the Lower Cyria District.  The door is banded with thick sheets of metal. “The windows on this floor have all been locked and boarded up.”

Billie nods. 

Wenyan takes her up the stairs.  “This entire floor has been condemned for years, but I barred all the windows anyway.”  When they get to the third floor, where the open window leads out to the balcony, Billie takes the Overseer mask off and waits for Wenyan to turn around. 

“And this floor can only be reached from the balcony or the stairs, which we control, so…”

“Wenyan,” the wolfhound dæmon says sharply, the fur on her hackles rising.  Wenyan stops, turns, sees Billie’s face, and stills.

Billie waves at him with her shard hand.  “Brother Wenyan,” she says. “You know who I am.”       

“Billie Lurk,” says Wenyan.  His dæmon begins to growl. “Are you here to kill me?”

Billie smiles faintly.  “No,” she says. “If your brothers caught on to what you were doing, they’d kill you themselves.  You have nothing to fear from me.”

Wenyan, if possible, grows even more still. 

“Take off the mask, Brother Wenyan,” Billie says.  “You’ve got nothing to fear from me.”

Wenyan, his hand shaking, does as he’s told.  His dæmon doesn’t stop growling.

Underneath his mask, Wenyan is older than Billie thought he’d be.  He’s Tyvian, with the same amber skin, dark hair, and dark eyes as Shan Yun.  His eyes turn up at the corners and his hair has gone silver at his temples.

“Why are you here?”  Wenyan asks. “Is it… do you need something from me?” 

Billie regards him for a moment.  The Outsider said that he helped heretics.  That he saved them from the other Overseers.  Wenyan believes in the Outsider and works every day against the Abbey. 

She gambles that the Outsider is right and says, “I’m going to rob the whale oil shipment tonight.  I need your help.”

Wenyan stares at her for a long moment, his eyes dark and wide.  His dæmon snarls deep in her throat, all her fur bristling.

“Don’t do it, Wenyan,” she growls, her voice harsh.  Billie eyes her. She doesn’t want to hurt Wenyan’s dæmon, not if Wenyan will help, but she’s not looking to get bitten either.  Wolfhound bites _hurt._  

“Be easy, Baozhai,” Wenyan says.  “I don’t think Billie Lurk is our enemy.  Are you?”

“I don't want to be,” says Billie.  Tam unfurls himself from the depths of Billie’s borrowed coat.  “You know what I do?”

“You know what I do?”  Wenyan returns.  His dæmon doesn’t stop growling. 

“Help people,” Billie says, bluntly.  “You help people escape the safe fate that befell your parents.  You save people from the Abbey.”

Wenyan sucks in a breath.  “You’re Marked,” he says.

Billie half-smiles.  “I’m not.   But I’ve known people who were.  That kind of thing leaves traces.  Like walking through a whale oil spill.” 

“The Knife of Dunwall,” Wenyan says. 

Billie nods.   _The Empress of the Isles,_ she almost adds.  How would Emily handle this?  How would she steal the Abbey’s whale oil?  Casper can fly much farther from Emily than Tam can go from Billie, and Emily is Marked. 

Billie doubts that Emily would kill Wenyan and his wolfhound dæmon. 

“Why do you need the whale oil?”  Wenyan asks. He lays a hand over his dæmon’s shoulders, tangling his fingers in her fur. 

“That’s my business,” Billie says.  “All you need to know is that it won’t go to the Abbey. Good enough for you?”

Wenyan regards Billie, his expression difficult to read, cast in shadow.  “I have spent my whole life stealing victims away from my brothers in the Abbey,” he says, slowly.  “My whole life. If I help you now, are you going to jeopardize that?”

“I’m no friend to the Abbey,” says Billie.  “I’m not a friend to the Eyeless or to Delilah’s witches,” and she gives Wenyan a hard look, so that he knows Billie knows exactly who he’s been helping, “but I saw what the Abbey did to the witches in the Conservatory.” 

Tam stretches out into the empty space between Wenyan and Billie, his tongue flickering.  Wenyan eyes him, but doesn’t flinch. He goes up a notch in Billie’s estimation.

Baozhai snarls again, her fur cragged, her head slung low. 

“I won’t do anything to keep you from helping heretics get away from the Abbey,” Billie says. 

Wenyan huffs.  “It’s not just heretics,” he says.  “It’s old midwives with herbs and bone charms.  Fishermen who find whalebone at the docks. People who keep the old ways and go about their business and don’t harm anyone.”

“You don’t need to sell me on it,” Billie tells him.  “I’m not here to join your crusade. I just need the whale oil.  I need a distraction.”

Wenyan narrows his eyes.  “Alright,” he says. “We’ll give you a distraction.  If you do something for me.”

 _We should just knock him out and do it ourselves_ , Tam grumbles, retreating back to Billie’s shoulders. 

“What do you want?”  Billie asks, wary.

Wenyan’s dark eyes glitter.  “Information,” he says, and all of a sudden Billie’s strunk by a flickering glimpse of the Void--herself in the black market, asking Mindy for the same thing Wenyan wants from her.  Emily Kaldwin on the deck of the Dreadful Wale, blood under her fingernails, asking Meagan Foster what she knew about the coup.  Daud with his sword at some nameless nobleman’s throat, growling _Talk, if you want to live._

 _It’s a circle,_ Billie thinks, feeling like a great wave has washed over her head and swept her out to sea.  Tam squeezes her shoulders, reminding her of where she is. It’s all a circle.  In and out, around and around.  A tide.

 _Easy now_ , Tam murmurs.  He’s concerned, though he’s trying to hide it.  Billie’s Eye gutters, flickers, and she can see Wenyan at seven, wailing as he’s dragged away by the Overseers, Wenyan at seventeen dragging a witch to safety by her hand, Wenyan at seventy-seven dying with a mask on his face and his hound at his side. 

Billie’s missing fingers ache. 

“What do you want to know?”  Billie says, dizzy, fighting it.

Wenyan’s eyes flicker again.  “I’ve heard rumors,” he says, “of an upset, in the Void.  The Eyeless have practically disappeared overnight. The ones that remain have gone mad with fear. My contacts are saying—” and Wenyan’s voice drops low, even though it’s just him and Billie and their dæmons in the room—“there are rumors that the Void is empty.  That the Outsider—that the Outsider’s gone.”

Billie looks Wenyan up and down, his greying hair, his wolfhound dæmon.  “The rumors are true.”

Baozhai stops growling.  Wenyan’s face goes pale, but he nods sharply.  She can tell that he wants to press her, to wring every detail from her that he can, but he doesn't.  He keeps to their agreement.  Her estimation of him goes up again.  “Alright,” he says. “I’ll help you. The shipment’s going to come through the courtyard and into the outpost.  It’ll be stored in the basement until three hours past midnight. A whole unit of Hound Squad is coming to take it to the Dust District after that.  If the shipment makes it to the Dust District, you won’t see it again.”

Billie narrows her good eye thoughtfully.  “Is there a way to get into the basement? Aside from the front door?” 

Wenyan shrugs.  “Vents,” he says.  “But if you’re not a rat, I don’t see how you’d manage it.” 

Billie has the Knife—she’ll be fine. 

“Alright,” she says.  “As soon as the shipment is in the basement, I’m going to need a distraction.  A loud one, that lasts for at least five minutes. Can you do that?”

“We’ll manage,” says Wenyan.  “Can you manage? If you leave even a drop of whale oil behind—” 

“Don’t worry about me,” Billie says, and Displaces to the open window just because she can.  Wenyan gasps. “I’ll be fine. Focus on your distraction. I need five minutes, Brother Wenyan.” 

Wenyan nods, his fingers still tangled in his dæmon’s fur.  “Five minutes,” he says.

Billie Displaces out the open window, sliding her borrowed mask back into place, and jumps back into the Outpost.  She makes her way down to the basement and, when no one’s looking, cuts sideways into the Void, closing the window behind her so that only a little bit of light remains. 

From here Billie can keep an eye out for the whale oil without being spotted.  She hates spending this much time in the Void. It’s cold and foreign and it pulls at Billie, whispers things, and she has to turn away, cradling Tam to her chest. 

But time trickles by and sure enough Billie hears, through her window between worlds, the sounds of men and hounds and bottles clinking together.  She watches as three Overseers bear a large crate down the stairs, open the basement door, and set the crate down. They search every corner of the room, even the vents—Emily could squeeze through vents, and it seems the rumor of a very tiny thief has spread—but don’t spot Billie’s window, and leave the whale oil behind, locking the door behind them. 

As soon as she’s sure they’re gone, Billie cuts her window wide enough to slip through and pads over to the crate. 

“Is this all there is?”  Tam hisses, peering down. 

The whale oil shipment is very small.  One crate with ten bottles of shiny, bright blue processed whale oil.  There’s not even enough to fill one tank. Billie can heft the crate easily.

“The shortage must be getting worse,” Billie says, picking up the crate and tucking it under one arm.  It’s fucking awkward, but she’ll manage. This time when she steps into the Void, Billie closes her window up all the way behind her, tucking the Twin-Bladed Knife back into her belt, and shifts so Tam can brace himself against her free arm.  “There’s hardly any whales left around the Isles.”

Tam hisses.  “I don’t know,” he says, doubtfully.  “Are they really that rare?”

“I’ve heard whalers say that you’re more likely to find mermaids than whales, now,” Billie says dryly.  “That the oceans are like deserts now, with nothing living for miles and miles.”

A terrible thought strikes her out of the blue.   What if the Outsider’s dæmon is a whale?   It would fit, wouldn’t it?  Nobody’s seen her in four thousand years, and the ocean is vast, unknowable. 

Isn’t the Outsider the god of whales? 

All of a sudden the Void feels too big, too wild.  Billie’s a castaway, lost at sea.

 _How are we going to find the Outsider’s dæmon?_   Bille wonders, frantically.   _How are we going to find her if she’s out in the sea somewhere?_

And all at once, all Billie wants is Daud.  She wants the Whalers. She wants Emily, and Deirdre, and her parents. 

“Stop it,” Tam hisses, fiercely.  Billie moves through the Void blindly, following the dim lights up and up.  She’ll find another place to cut through and step back into her own world, and then she’ll Displace back to the outpost, collect the Outsider, and—

And what?  Scour the whole ocean for his dæmon?  Billie promised she’d help the Outsider find her, but if she’s out at sea, can she even be found?

“ _Stop_!”   Tam says, and lunges, sinking his fangs into Billie’s metal arm.  She doesn’t feel it, of course—he can’t hurt her, not there—but the shock of it startles her out of her downward spiral.  She grips the crate of whale oil tighter.

“Tam,” she says, hoarse.  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Neither do I,” Tam says, letting her arm go.  “But now’s not the time, or the place. Head up, Whaler.”

And it’s Daud’s old rallying cry that pushes Billie forward.  She does as Tam tells her, walking through the Void for what feels like an interminable amount of time before stopping to cut a hole between worlds. 

Her first few cuts show Billie blank walls or black space--she can’t step through here, so she closes her windows and keeps trying. 

Finally she opens a window into a back alley somewhere close to the sea.  Billie slips through it, closes it behind her, and Displaces onto the first balcony she sees.  She’s not far from the Lower Cyria District. A few more Displacements and some rooftop jumps and she’s back circling the Overseer outpost. 

Billie leaves the whale oil on a rooftop and Displaces down to where the Outsider is waiting patiently, watching the Overseers like a skinny, bright-eyed crow. 

Down below Overseer Wenyan, true to his word, has sown chaos.  Billie has no idea how he managed it, but half the outpost is now afire, and Overseers are running to and fro trying to stamp out the flames. 

Tam hisses, impressed.  “That’s a resourceful man,” he says in Billie’s ear. 

Bille half-smiles.  “That is,” she agrees, and drops down next to the Outsider.  He turns, raising an eyebrow.

“Success?”  he asks.

Billie nods, offering him her hand.  He takes it. His palm is cool and dry. 

Together they Displace across the rooftops, back to where Billie’s stashed the whale oil.  The Outsider looks down at her little cache, considering.     

“The Overseers must be getting desperate,” he says.  “There’s hardly enough whale oil here to summon a witch-flame, let alone do any true magic.” 

“I wouldn’t know.”  Billie never did any of Delilah’s rituals.  Even after she was stripped of the Arcane Bond she didn’t dabble in magic.  She learned how to make bone charms, more out of necessity than anything, but the true magic she left well alone. 

The Outsider reaches out and runs a long finger down one of the bottles.  His expression is strange and terrible.

Billie takes a deep breath.  She has to ask. She has to. Billie looks at all of the whale oil and says, carefully not looking at the Outsider, “She’s not a whale, is she?  Your dæmon?”

The Outsider half-smiles.  “No,” he says. “She’s not a whale.” 

“Good,” Billie says, wiping her mouth with her flesh-and-bone hand.  Tam squeezes her arm comfortingly. “Because I don’t think I could find her if she’s a whale.  A bird, a hound, a serpent, I’d find her. I’d turn over every anthill in the Isles if she’s an ant.  But a whale--I can’t find a whale.”

The Outsider brushes a hand over Billie’s shoulder, clumsily, like he’s still learning how to touch another person.  “Billie Lurk,” he says, “you can do anything you set your mind to. Even find a whale in the middle of the sea.”

“But your dæmon’s not a whale,” Billie says, trying to hide the fact that her good eye was burning.  She promised him that she’d help him find his dæmon, and she meant it.  She still means it.  But she wants to be sure she knows what she’s getting into.

The Outsider’s smile widens.  “She’s not a whale,” he promises. 

“A shark?” Billie presses, well-aware of the Outsider’s habit of slipping by on technicalities.  “An eel? A hagfish?”

“None of those,” the Outsider says.  His face turns thoughtful, his green eyes glinting.  “Though she did always like dolphin shapes, when we were children…” 

“You’re fucking with me,” Billie says, pulling back a little so she can give the Outsider a gimlet eye.  “Tam? He’s fucking with me, right?”

Tam just laughs.  “Let’s get all of this to the Howlers,” he says, ever practical.  “And then we can go home.”

 _Home,_ Billie thinks with a jolt, looking at Tam curled around her wrist, at the Outsider and his mischievous eyes. 

She still has no idea what she’s doing.  She still has no idea where to start.  She is still in over her head.  But _home._ She likes the sound of that.  

 


	4. panthera uncia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your continued support! I'm having a lot of fun for this project. 
> 
> I went back to the first chapter and added sort of a primer on dæmons and His Dark Materials, for those of you who haven't slogged through the books!

_panthera uncia_

 

 By the time Billie gets the crate of whale oil to the corner of Maray and Crosswind, she’s tired all the way down to the base of her spine.  She drops the Outsider back at the apartment—she doesn’t want him anywhere near Mindy or the Howlers—and hoists the crate up onto one shoulder, Displacing from balcony to balcony as she circles the Dust District and finally drops down somewhere in the nebulous, shifting border that splits the Abbey of the Everyman from the Howlers like a mountain holding a river from the sea.

Mindy’s waiting for her, lounging against a crumbling brick wall with her arms crossed behind her head and her dæmon crouched on a bare jut of wind-worn concrete an arm’s length away.  When she sees Billie coming, Azzo coughs a noise that’s somewhere between a warning and a greeting. Mindy tracks Billie as she Displaces down from the last balcony and grins lazily when Billie lands. 

“That’s pretty handy,” Mindy says, making a strange here-there motion with one hand to mime Billie’s Displacement.  “You Marked? Touched by the Outsider?”

“No,” Billie says.  To Tam she thinks _, What does Mindy know of the Outsider’s Marked?_  

 _Paolo_ , Tam whispers back _.   He wasn’t Marked, but he had a hand that was_.   For just a moment Tam sounds like the Outsider, speaking in half-truths and riddles.  _The magic in it was old and stiff, but still real enough to touch._

When Billie first started to take notice of Paolo, after she’d aligned herself with Aramis Stilton and started trying to drag Karnaca back from the edge of the Void, folk in the street called him Paolo Twice-Dead.  _Kill him once and he’ll disappear for a while,_ they whispered.  _He’ll crumble into rats and dust and whispers, and then he’ll come skulking out of the shadows with a sword in his hand.  Kill him twice before the sun came up and he’ll stay dead, but no one’s ever managed it._

“All this trouble for one crate of whale oil?” Billie says, skirting the issue of the Outsider entirely.  Tam pulls himself out of her coat and flicks his tongue out at Azzo.

Mindy grins and holds her hands out.  Billie turns the crate over without demanding payment.  She doesn’t have to. If Mindy backs out on their deal there’s not a hole in Serkonos Mindy can hide in where Billie won’t find her, and Billie and Mindy both know it. 

Besides, Mindy doesn’t strike Billie as the type to go back on her word, even though she has a fox dæmon. 

“Believe it or not, this is a whole month’s supply right here,” says Mindy.  She tilts the crate so Azzo can rear up onto her hindpaws and peer in, sniffing each bottle of whale oil like a vinter.

Bille raises her eyebrow, disbelieving.  “I have reliable information that there’s not enough whale oil in that crate for any kind of proper witch-work,” she says.  Tam hisses, disapproving, but Billie ignores him. Admitting to Mindy that Billie has arcane contacts won’t hurt anything so long as Billie doesn’t turn over any names.   

“I’m not a witch,” Mindy says.  She sets the crate down very carefully at her feet.  Her tattoos flicker in Billie’s Eye, purple and blue and silver, the subtleties of the Void woven together with flesh and blood.  “Just an artist. I don’t burn through the oil that fast--that much whale oil inside a human body is, eh. Not so good.” She makes an accompanying motion with her hand, palm flat, facing the ground, wobbling side to side. 

Billie smiles.  “I can imagine,” she says.  “So, there you have it. The Abbey’s shipment of whale oil, as promised.” 

Mindy inclines her head.  “As promised,” she echoes.  “What was the deal again? Whale oil for information, and a delivery?” 

Tam stretches across the distance between Billie and Mindy, tongue flickering.  He’s graceful enough that the movement looks casual and unstudied, a snake reaching out to smell at something interesting, but there’s no way Mindy misses the glint of his fangs. 

“I want to know about the Abbey,” Billie says.  “What are they planning? Who are the big players?  Who’s in the running for Vice Overseer?”

“Right now the Abbey’s mostly running around like an avocet with its head cut off.  Byrne’s disappearance and the chaos in the Conservatory’s left the Overseers directionless and scared,” Mindy says, meeting Tam’s black eyes with a calm stare of her own.  “And every Overseer with hound puppy dæmon is scrambling to be named Vice Overseer. I’ve got a guy inside, and he says there’s three main contenders. One of ‘em will be appointed.”

“Names?”  Billie asks. 

“Overseer Yiando Ochoa, out of Cullero, Overseer Kolya Maksimov from some frozen Tyvian hellhole, and Overseer Oliver Brimsley, from Dunwall.” 

Billie knows immediately that Oliver Brimsley is the Overseer with the black wolfhound dæmon she saw in Campo Seta, but she schools her face into thoughtful indifference, tilting her head to the side.  “Are all three in the city?” she asks.

“Like flies on shit,” Mindy says.  “We’ve seen Ochoa and Maksimov. Ochoa has a Serkonan look and a lioness dæmon.  Maksimov has some kind of Tyvian monkey.”

“What are their dæmons’ names?”  Billie asks. A lioness, a monkey, and a wolfhound.  It sounds like the set-up to one of Rulfio’s terrible jokes.   _A lioness, a monkey, and a wolfhound walk into the Abbey._  

Mindy’s mouth pinches.   

“Don’t hold out on me,” Billie says, nodding at the crate of whale oil.  “We both know you’re too thorough to miss their names.”

To Billie’s surprise, Azzo laughs.  “She’s got us there, Min,” the fox dæmon says, grinning with all her fangs.  “Ochoa’s dæmon is called Arasibo. The monkey is Kostroma. We don’t know what Brimsley’s dæmon is, but her name is Raginhail.” 

 _Raginhail,_ Billie thinks, putting a name to the black wolfhound that had walked in Oliver Brimsley’s shadow.  An unwieldy name, but it fits.

It’s good, Billie thinks, to give a name to one’s enemies. 

“Oliver Brimsley’s dæmon is a black wolfhound,” Tam says, withdrawing until he’s back around Billie’s shoulders again.  “He’s the one we saw down in Campo Seta--we thought he was Morleyan, not Gristolish. He was with three other Hounds. They were looking for something, but for obvious reasons we didn’t stick around to find out what that might be.” 

“A wolfhound?”  Mindy whistles between her teeth.  “That’ll put him ahead of Ochoa and Maksimov.”

“You think?”  Billie asks. She’s inclined to agree.  Byrne’s dæmon had been a wolfhound. High Overseer Campbell’s dæmon had been a wolfhound too, a fat, lazy beast who Billie remembered spent most meetings between Burrows, Campbell, and the Whalers lounging around on silk pillows.

The High Overseer after Campbell--not the Morleyan who’d held the office for less than a week, if Billie remembered right, but the one after--had also had a wolfhound dæmon. 

 _What was his name?_    Billie wonders.  Khulal? Khulan? His dæmon had been almost pretty for a wolfhound, one of the angular, long-faced Tyvian breeds instead of a Dunwall scrapper.  Billie’d seen a silvergraph of the High Overseer in the newspaper once, back when she read the damn things. 

Overseers value their hound dæmons.  Wolfhounds are symbols of the everyman; hard-working, durable, faithful.  Wolfhounds follow the strongest among their number and don’t like to disrupt the way of things. 

“Overseer Maksimov won’t get the office,” Billie says.  “Not with a monkey. But Ochoa… we’re in Serkonos. Lion dæmons are good luck here.” 

Mindy shrugs.  “I’d prefer Ochoa to Brimsley, but then I know more about Ochoa,” she says.  “We run some contraband up to Gristol through Cullero. Ochoa’s known there.  He’s a hard man, but a fair one. Less likely to shoot some kid in the street for painting “the Outsider walks among us” than most others.” 

“A moderate?”  In Billie’s experience, there are no moderate Overseers.   The Abbey of the Everyman is built on fear and blood and subjugation.  It condones the torture of women and children and toothless old men. Billie supposes there are some Overseers like Wenyan, Overseers who protect people, who look after the weak and vulnerable in their cities, but most of them? 

Most of them are as vicious as their hound dæmons, bloodthirsty and drunk on their own power.

All the Abbey is rotten, not just the Overseers.  _The Sisters of the Oracular Order maim their own dæmons,_ Tam hisses, shuddering.  They’d seen maimed dæmons when they’d been in the Conservatory.  Dæmons whose paws had been cut off to restrict their roving feet, whose eyes had been put out to restrict their wandering gaze, whose mouths had been sewn shut to restrict lying tongues and rampant hungers.

“Moderate enough,” Mindy replies.  “I don’t know anything about this Overseer Brimsley, and that makes me nervous.  The Dust District can’t survive another purist like Byrne. Everyone west of Calle Aventa prays to the Outsider.  You and I are proper heretics, but most folks? They don’t deserve to die for lighting purple candles or carving a bit of bone.” 

“Nobody does,” Billie mutters.  She’s seen what the Abbey does to people.  She’s seen the mess the Abbey makes.  Broken kneecaps, shattered teeth, bodies burned and blackened.  The Flooded District had been red after the Overseers surged through. 

Mindy shrugs.  “We’ll see what happens,” she says.  “There’s still no High Overseer in Gristol to appoint someone down here, and somebody,” she cuts Billie a pointed look, “raised unholy hell on the Oracular Order, so they’re not any help either.” 

Tam hisses a laugh, unrepentant.  “They got in the way,” he says. Billie and Tam had intended to go through the Royal Conservatory very, very quietly.  Daud had been walking the shore between life and death and Billie had wanted to get in, get out, and see him before he slipped into the Void. 

But then she and Tam had found the witches, the remnants of Breanna’s coven, of Delilah’s.  Billie had _known_ some of those women—fifteen years ago they’d been teenagers giggling at Delilah’s witch-lights, their dæmons young and unsettled.  

To see them as they’d been after weeks of the ancient music, of the Blind Sisters snapping their dæmons’ wings like toothpicks, had been… well. 

Billie Lurk has always had a temper. 

“You won’t catch me complaining,” Mindy says with a shrug.  “What you did in the Conservatory helped us out a lot. The Abbey’s too busy with damage control to bother us much now.” 

“Glad to help,” says Billie dryly.  “And my other question? Have you heard anything about a dæmon wandering around without a man with her?” 

Mindy’s expression closes off.

“That depends on what you’re asking,” Azzo says, addressing Billie directly.  Most dæmons don’t talk to humans who aren’t theirs, but Billie gets the impression that Mindy and Azzo don’t like to follow convention.  Billie doesn’t mind. “Are you looking for solid information, or rumors?”

Billie shrugs with one shoulder.  “Whatever you have,” she says. “I’ll sort the truth from the stories out myself.” 

Azzo pins her ears to her skull, but says, “There are always stories.  How long ago did your… client’s dæmon go missing?”

And here’s the tricky part—Billie can’t tell Mindy and Azzo that she’s looking for the Outsider’s dæmon, who’s been missing since the Outsider was sacrificed to the heart of the Void four thousand years ago. 

Billie thinks for a moment, and settles on, “Since the Eyeless started to become more active.”  That’s not a lie. The Eyeless have been around for thousands of years. They only started causing trouble in Karnaca when Luca Abele took over from his father, but Mindy doesn’t need to know what kind of timeframe Billie’s referring to. 

Mindy whistles.  “That’s a good while,” she says.  “And your client? How’s he holding up?  Is he mad?”

“He’s not mad,” Billie says.  The Outsider’s cryptic and ancient and fucking weird, but he’s sane enough.  He’s saner than Billie’d be, if her throat had been cut and she’d been thrown inside the Void, Tam torn from her hands and cast out into the world alone.  “But he’s conspicuous, and he’s hurting.”

Azzo grumbles low in her throat and Tam shifts, his scales bridling.  “Did the Eyeless take her?” Azzo asks.

Billie nods. 

Mindy’s skin goes grey.  “He hasn’t been intercised, has he?” 

The impossibly sharp edge of a silver guillotine gleams in Billie’s memory.  “No,” she says. “Just separated. Have you heard anything?”

Azzo and Mindy trade a glance.  Tam hisses, displeased.

“There’s been rumors of strange dæmons in the Isles for years,” Mindy says, holding up her hands to soothe Tam’s temper.  “Even when I was a kid in Caulkenny we told stories of a doe-shaped dæmon wailing in the woods. But here in Karnaca, there’ve been stories of… I don’t know.  Strange lights in the sky. Strange shapes in the sewers. Sometimes miners come back from Shindaerey convinced they’ve heard a wolf howling in the depths of the mine or a whale singing between the clouds.” 

Billie’s maimed hand itches. 

She doesn’t want to go back up to the mines.  But the Outsider’s dæmon can’t be up there; if she’d been in the mines, she would’ve come to him when Billie pulled him out of the Void.  She wouldn’t have stayed away, not if she had another choice.

“You know anybody I could talk to?”  Billie asks. “Anybody who’s seen these strange lights or seen anything?”

“The miners don’t talk to us Howlers much,” Azzo says.  “But they talk to that doctor. The one out at Addermire.  And to Lucia Pastor, though she’s gone to ground.”

“Hypatia,” Billie murmurs. 

“That’s the one,” Mindy says. 

Billie likes Hypatia well enough.  At Emily’s invitation (which had pissed Billie off to no end at the time, Emily inviting people aboard the _Dreadful Wale_ like it was Dunwall Tower), Hypatia had stayed with them for a month, piecing herself back together after Luca and Delilah broke her and twisted the pieces around for their own ends. 

But Billie’s also wary of her, and rightly so; Hypatia’s the Crown Killer.  Hypatia killed dozens. She took Anton, gave him over for Jindosh to torture and terrorize.  Emily said that Hypatia was cured, that the Crown Killer was gone, but Billie is a killer.  She knows killers.

Daud told Billie that once started killing, that’s what she would be forever. 

“You can stop being a miner,” he had said.  Tavor had been on his shoulder, her sharp keen eyes boring holes through Billie and Tam.  They had already killed Radanis and were on their way to killing many more. “You can stop being a fisherman or a shopkeeper or a wife.  But once you’ve killed, you’ll always be a killer. It doesn’t wash away.”

He’d been right.  Billie had hidden from that truth for years, but it never stopped being true.  She’s been a killer since she was ten years old.

And Hypatia is a killer too. 

 _You’re overthinking it_ , Tam says, amused.   We can handle Alexandria Hypatia. _Her dæmon is a_ hummingbird _._

 _Maybe you’re right_ , Billie says.   _But hummingbirds have claws too._

“Thanks,” Billie says out loud, nodding at Mindy.  “We appreciate it.”

“Thank you,” Mindy returns.  “But our business isn’t done.  Didn’t you have a letter you wanted delivered to the Empress?” 

Billie almost groans.  She’d forgotten about the letter to Emily. 

“Yeah,” she says.  “If you think you can get it to Dunwall Tower, anyway.  I guess it doesn’t matter if it falls into the Royal Spymaster’s hands.  He’ll pass it on to the Empress.”

“You haven’t heard?”  Azzo the fox dæmon says.  She leaps from her perch down to Mindy’s heels, where she twines around Mindy’s legs like a cat.  “There is no Royal Spymaster. No Royal Protector, either. The news broke this morning.”

Billie blinks, surprised.  “Lord Attano’s dead?” Even Tam’s caught off guard, his shock echoing across the link he shares with Billie.   

Billie and Tam only met Attano the one time.  She’d held him in her power for ten seconds, maybe less.  He’d disabled three Whalers before Billie had been able to pin him down with the Arcane Bond, and even then his dæmon had broken free and flown at Billie, tearing at Billie’s chest and hanging on through three Transversals until Billie had shaken her off somewhere between the Tower and the Golden Cat.

Billie’d been long gone by the time Attano went for Daud.  He’d escaped Coldridge sometime in the nebulous heady days between Billie meeting Delilah and the Overseers storming the Flooded District.  It had been a foregone conclusion among the Whalers that if Attano survived he’d come for them, but no one had been that worried.

They’d beaten Attano once, after all.  They’d killed his Empress and torn his dæmon away.  They’d stolen his daughter. He hadn’t been able to stop them. 

Billie’d heard from Thomas that when Attano had finally come for Daud, he’d moved through the Flooded District like a fucking shadow.  None of the Whalers had even heard him coming, not even Daud, who’d woken up in his bed the day Emily Kaldwin was crowned with a headache, missing his keys and his pride.  Attano’d clawed his way through Dunwall, through Burrows and the Rat Plague and the Whalers, and he’d put Emily on the throne.

He’d beaten them, all of them.  Thomas had been almost awe-struck when he’d told Billie about everything that had happened. 

Ever since, Billie’s always thought of Corvo Attano in the abstract, like he’s a pillar or a plinth, unbreakable, enduring.  That he’s died is—well. 

Tam’s scales are cool against Billie’s neck.  Solid. Billie appreciates it.

But then Mindy shakes her head.  “Attano’s not dead,” she says. “He’s… retired, the papers say.  He’s in poor health. Word on the street is that the Witch-Empress nearly killed him.  She had him to herself for months.”

Emily said that Delilah had turned her father to stone.  In the aftermath of the coup, Billie’d kept an eye out for news from Dunwall.  Delilah had been defeated, the Overseers obliterated, and Corvo Attano had been listed in the papers as alive, if not well.  Billie’d assumed that Emily had woken her father up or had figured out how to undo Delilah’s magic. 

 _Being trapped in stone for months can’t be good for anybody’s health_ , Tam suggests, turning the puzzle over.   _Delilah couldn’t do that when we knew her.  Who’s to say what she really did to Attano?_

That’s fair, and it’s also a good bit nicer than Tam usually is whenever Delilah’s name is mentioned or Billie’s past with her is brought up.  Tam had never trusted Delilah, and he’d flat-out despised Delilah’s dæmon Hemming. That Billie had trusted Delilah—loved her, even, after a fashion, though that fizzled out like an empty tank of whale oil quick enough—still drives Tam to bristling, sharp-toothed anger whenever he thinks about it for longer than a second or two. 

“Any word on a new Protector?”  Billie asks. She can’t imagine Attano retiring with grace.  He’d spent three decades serving the throne--people like that don’t let go easy. 

Mindy shakes her head.  “Word’s too fresh,” she says.  “Maybe they’re talking about it in Dunwall, but no word’s come here yet.  So I guess if you want to write a letter to the fuckin’ Empress, of all people, now’s the time.” 

Billie dips her head.  “Got a pen and some paper?”  she asks.

Mindy smiles, turns out her pockets obligingly.  Billie does the same. Between them they find a pen—half-chewed, a habit Mindy sheepishly admits she’s trying to break—and a few scraps of paper that they can cobble together to form a letter. 

Billie writes Emily a quick note in Whaler cipher.  She’d taught Emily a bit, back on the _Dreadful Wale_ , and Emily’s not called the Clever out of flattery.  She’ll figure the rest of the cipher out.

 _Karnaca is still bleeding,_ Billie writes, while Tam watches over her shoulder and Mindy pointedly looks away, murmuring to Azzo.   _She needs a Duke.  Remember your promise to your people._  

Billie doesn’t sign her note.  She doesn’t need to. Satisfied, she turns the note over to Mindy, who folds it up and tucks it safely inside her vest.  “I’ll send it over to Dunwall with my best guy,” Mindy promises. “You good waiting a few weeks?”

“I am,” Billie says.  Two weeks won’t kill Karnaca, probably.  Whaler cipher can’t be translated across a telegram.  The delay is worth it if her note can get to Emily intact. 

“Good business, then,” Mindy says, sticking her hand out with a grin.

“Good business,” Billie agrees.  And it has been--a few hours of work for solid information, mail service to Dunwall Tower, and a few new contacts is not a bad trade.  Meagan Foster had known a good number of people, but Billie’s put Meagan to rest; she needs her own network now, and in one evening she’s established positive contact with the leader of the Howlers and with a heretical Overseer. 

Daud would be proud. 

Tam coils himself around Billie's flesh-and-bone arm, twisting to peer at Mindy and Azzo.  Azzo blinks back, her expression thoughtful.

“You ever want more work, you know where to find me,” Mindy says, picking up her crate of whale oil.  Azzo leaps inside of it, settling among the bottles. “I’ll put the word out among my people. You’re no enemy of ours.” 

Billie nods.  She likes Mindy well enough that she might even tell Mindy if there’s ever a hit put out on her.   Having a friend in the Dust District is worth giving Mindy a head start if the winds of Karnaca ever turn on her. 

Billie Displaces up onto a balcony, then onto a streetlight and up to a roof before Mindy can try to coax her into taking another job.  Billie’s tired, and she has a lot to think about. 

As she heads back to the apartment, Billie mulls over what she’s learned. 

“We’ll have to pay a visit to Addermire soon,” Tam says.  “If the miners have seen something, Hypatia’ll know about it.  She might be able to help anyway. She’s smarter than Jindosh. Anton liked her.”

“She owes us, too,” Billie adds.  She doesn’t know yet whether Hypatia will honor the debt or try and kill Billie to get out of it, but there’s really only one way to find out. 

Billie really, really hopes that Hypatia doesn’t try to kill her.  The Crown Killer had been an animal, supernaturally strong and fast.  Billie doesn’t want to fight that if she doesn’t have to.  The thought is exhausting. 

Tam squeezes her arm.  “We’ll rest soon,” he promises. 

Billie half-smiles.  “After we find the Outsider’s dæmon,” she agrees.  The longer the Outsider goes without her, the more dangerous it is for him.  Someone will eventually notice that he doesn’t have a dæmon.

“We should do something to delay the Abbey picking a new Vice Overseer,” Tam says.  

Billie snorts.  “One thing at a time,” she says.  “The Outsider needs his dæmon first.   Then we can see about destabilizing a corrupt religious institution.” 

“If you insist,” Tam says with a sigh.  Bille rolls her eye at him, clenches her left fist, and jumps into the darkness.

\---

Billie’s dreams that she’s standing on a jagged spire of spherite high above Dunwall, Delilah at her side.  Delilah’s hand is on Billie’s hip and spread out below them is the whole city, the Flooded District drowned in blood, Dunwall Tower broken and crumbling, Draper’s Ward, Spinner’s Row, the Distillery District, all soot-stained and filled with bones. 

There’s a crown on Bille’s head.  It digs into her skin. She and Delilah are the queens of ashes.  The queens of grief.

“Look,” Delilah says, her voice as sweet as any music.  Outsider’s eyes, Billie loved her. Blindly, hungrily, with both hands.  She misses Tam’s weight around her neck and wonders, vaguely, where he’s gone. 

Delilah’s dæmon Hemming twines between Billie’s legs, crooning low in throat.  Pleasure shivers up her spine.

“Look,” Delilah says, sweeping a hand out to encompass the city.  All Billie can see is the Flooded District. The death, the blood, the fetid water, the Overseers and their hounds celebrating in the streets.  Daud is strung up from Jessamine Kaldwin’s statue, his arms outstretched, his throat torn out. Billie’s eyes burn. “Look at what you made possible,” Delilah says, and Billie wants her, still, she wants Delilah like she wants a drink of wine, like she wants blood on her sword, like she wants a bullet.  “Look at what you did. ” 

“No,” Billie protests, trying to pull the crown off her head.  “No, I didn’t do this. This wasn’t me!”

Delilah smiles.  “My dear,” she says sweetly, “of course it was you.”

And then Delilah, smiling the smile that won Billie to her bed that first night all those years ago, plants a hand in the small of Billie’s back and shoves. 

\---

Billie wakes up with Tam’s teeth sunk into her hand.  He’s kept his venom back, of course, but the bite hurts all the same.  Billie nearly yells, choking back her cry at the last second and sitting bolt upright. 

It takes longer than it should for Billie’s apartment to resolve itself.  Gloom and shadow blur the apartment’s edges. Weak light filters in from underneath the window.  The Outsider stirs on the couch, a hand thrown up over his face. And Tam has wrapped himself all the way around Billie’s flesh-and-blood arn, squeezing as tight as he can, and his fangs are stuck in the skin between Billie’s forefinger and her thumb. 

Already the wound is going numb. 

“Ouch,” Billie hisses.  Tam lets go, his eyes wide in the dark. 

“You wouldn’t wake up,” he whispers.  Billie’s scared him. His heartbeat flutters against her skin.  “I couldn’t make you wake up.”

“Well I’m awake now,” Billie snaps, without any heat.  Her dream is slipping away through her fingers. Only Delilah’s smile and the pale light of Hemming’s eyes stay, shining in the dark. 

Billie leverages herself to her feet and slips outside onto the balcony where there’s better light.  Tam loosens his death grip around her arm, his scales smoothing out in apology.

“Sorry about the bite,” Tam says.  “How does it feel?”

Billie inspects the wound.  The last thing she needs is to lose her good hand—and it’s sad that it’s her good hand, because she’s only got the three fingers—to necrosis.  Fortunately, despite the numbness, Billie’s pretty sure the bite is dry.

When Tam settled, Daud insisted that he learn how to bite with venom and without.  If Tam didn’t want to envenomate Billie, he won’t have.

“It’s fine,” Billie says, flexing her remaining fingers.  She keeps antivenin, painstakingly made, in her kit. She’ll take it she needs to. “If I drop dead in a few hours, though, that’s on you.” 

Tam squeezes her arm again, a serpentine shrug, and slithers his way up her arm so he can tuck his head against Billie’s chin.  “I couldn’t wake you up,” he says again, muffled. “I could feel you dreaming, and I couldn’t wake you.”

“It’s alright, Tam,” Billie says.  “It was an old nightmare. Nothing to worry about.” 

Tam doesn’t say anything, just tucks his head against Billie’s chin even harder, like he can hold her to the present with strength alone. 

They sit on the balcony like that for a while, until the street lights dim and thin grey dawn breaks over Karnaca, hurried along by wind howling down from Shindaerey.  People start moving in the streets below and the wind brings down the scent of sequoias. Gradually Tam’s heartbeat settles back down. He loosens his grip on her arm. 

Billie’s dream fades away, even the gleam of Hemming’s eyes ebbing.  Morning breaks over Karnaca, and Billie wordlessly slips back inside. 

She finds the Outsider staring at a coffee press Billie fished out of an abandoned apartment like he can will it into working. 

Billie smiles.

“You have to boil water first,” Billie says.  “Then pour water over ground coffee.”

The Outsider blinks.  “Water,” he repeats. He has a very subtle accent, a lilt that curls all of the edges of his words like smoke. 

Billie leaves the Outsider to it.  He’s picking things up quickly; he manages to make a pot of halfway-decent coffee without any trouble, and only burns the eggs he insists on trying out a little. 

They eat together in companionable quiet.  Tam stretches out in the sun to warm himself and banish the last of his anxiety.  Billie keeps an eye on her bite and an ear on her pulse and doesn’t feel like she’s about to drop dead, so she ignores her bite and focuses on the Outsider. 

“Mindy turned over some information,” she says.  The Outsider’s eyes sharpen, and he pulls himself away from his eggs with great effort. 

“Oh?”  he asks.

“The Abbey’s a mess,” Billie says.  “There’s three contenders for Byrne’s position, but no one to appoint them and no unity within the Abbey.”

“Who are the contenders?”  the Outsider asks, eyes narrowed.  Billie can practically see him rifling through his vast collection of names and knowledge.  He claims not to know everyone who passes him by, but he seems to know at least a little bit about anyone Billie names or points out. 

“Yiando Ochoa, Kolya Maksimov, and Oliver Brimsley,” Billie recites.  “One Serkonan, one Tyvian, and one fellow Dunwallian.”

The Outsider chews thoughtfully.  “Ochoa comes from a long line of pirates and witches,” he says.  “But the family lost my interest generations ago; I don’t know anything about Yiando Ochoa, expect that he wears his mask with pride.  Kolya Maksimov once killed three teenage boys and buried their bodies under the ice. And Oliver Brimsley… He is cruel and depraved, but boring.  Not an inventive bone in his body.”

“Cruelty is boring?”  Billie thinks of Brimsley on the docks, of his dæmon’s glittering eyes. 

The Outsider shrugs.  “After four thousand years?  Very,” he says. “Humans are always cruel to each other, and to other things.”

 _That’s fair_ , Billie supposes. 

She sighs.  “It looks like we’re safe from the Abbey for now,” she says.  “While they’re disorganized like this, they’re not much of a threat.  If we can I’d like to prevent this Brimsley from taking the Vice Overseer title.  Nothing I’ve heard about him has been good. As for other news, Corvo Attano’s retired, of all things, and I’ve maybe got a lead on your dæmon.” 

The Outsider stops cutting his eggs and looks up at Billie with his piercing eyes.  “Retired?” he says.

Billie frowns.  She would have thought that the Outsider would be more interested in news of his dæmon, not news of Corvo Attano. 

“I was surprised too, but is that really so strange?”  Billie asks, watching the Outsider closely. “He’s got to be what, fifty-something?  It’s not so odd that he’d retire around this time. I’m sure he’s not as fast or as strong as he used to be.” 

“Corvo once told me he’d burn Dunwall to the ground before he let the court force him to retire,” the Outsider says, giving Billie a rather alarming look into both Attano’s personality and his relationship with the Outsider in one sentence.  

“People change,” Billie says.  “Fifteen years ago, I would have told you that I’d never take another contract again.  But here we are.”

“Here we are,” the Outsider agrees, conceding the point.  He still looks troubled, and he pushes away what’s left of his breakfast.

“Mindy said that some miners have seen some strange things in the mines,” Billie presses, deciding to let the issue of Attano drop.  “Strange lights, strange shapes, creatures prowling around where they’re not supposed to be. Could your dæmon be up at Shindaerey? Would she go there, where you were killed?”

The Outsider’s expression flickers.  “I don’t know,” he admits, after a long silence.  He looks very young and very vulnerable, sitting in the early morning light with his shoulders hunched and his dæmon still missing.  “I wouldn’t go back, not ever, but she… maybe.  Maybe she’s still waiting for me there.”

“Mindy suggested that we talk to Dr. Hypatia,” Billie says.  Tam stretches and abandons his sunbathing in favor of eating scraps of egg off Billie’s plate.  When he’s finished, her dæmon licks at her bite wound and slithers up her arm, settling in his accustomed place around her shoulders.  “She said that the miners talk to Hypatia; if one of them saw a lone dæmon, they might have told her.”

The Outsider nods tightly, a mulish expression on his face. 

Tam flicks his tongue out.  “What’s wrong?” he asks, more gently than Billie would have been able to manage it. 

“Nothing,” says the Outsider. 

Billie snorts.  “Bullshit,” she says.  “Come on. If you can’t tell us, who can you tell?”  She almost asks, _Attano?_    But that might be crossing a line—Billie doesn’t know what the Outsider was like with his Marked.  Delilah had never talked about him and Daud had always made his feelings very clear.  But what if the Outsider and Attano actually got along? 

“It’s—frustrating,” the Outsider finally says, low and fierce. 

“What is?”

“That I don’t know where my dæmon is,” the Outsider growls.  “That I don’t know what she’s doing, or what she might do. I can’t—I don’t even think I can feel her.” 

 _I really stepped in it this time_ , Billie thinks, mildly panicked.  She doesn’t know what to do or say to comfort the Outsider—she’s never been more than fifteen meters apart from Tam. She’s not good at dealing with other people’s problems. 

Tam sighs.

“We’ll find her,” Tam says, strongly.  “I know we will. And then you can get to know her all over again.”

“I should know her,” the Outsider insists.  “She’s mine!   I should--I should have watched her, I should have never have taken my eyes off of her.”  He chokes, angry and upset. “How can I not know where she is? What she is?  I know the twists and turns of the Void itself!  I know the hour the world began and the hour it will end.  I know where the world and the Void kiss like lovers and how even the stars will drown, I know the song inside every whale, _but I don’t know where my dæmon is.”_  

At the end of his rant the Outsider is shaking wildly.  The taste of saltwater is strong in the air.

Billie rides it out, letting the Outsider grieve, letting him burn with anger for the life that was stolen away from him, for the years his dæmon had to spend alone.  Gradually the sharp salt taste fades and the Outsider’s trembling slows to fine tremors in his long, graceful hands.

Tam hisses, sympathetic. 

“We’ll find her,” Billie says.  “We’ve got a lead now. We have places we can check, people we can visit.  We’ll find her.  I promise.” 

The Outsider manages a tired smile.  “I know, Billie Lurk,” he says. “One of the downsides of being mortal again is a lack of patience, I’m afraid.  Before I had all the time in the world. Now…”

“Now there’s a clock on things,” Billie says.  She understands. Sometimes Billie feels like years have run through her fingers like water.  Yesterday she was ten years old looking up at Daud’s red coat; today she’s in a red coat of her own, and Daud is nothing but ash. 

Tam squeezes her shoulders. 

“We’ll find her,” Billie repeats, like speaking the words will make the Outsider’s dæmon appear out of thin air right here in their stolen apartment. 

The Outsider dips his head. 

They sit in silence for a while, the three of them.  Billie’s hand aches and the Outsider pushes his eggs around his plate a few more times, half-heartedly, the peace of their morning broken.

“What’s your name?”  Billie asks suddenly, more to break the silence than anything else.  “I can’t keep calling you the Outsider anymore, can I?”

“We could call him the Insider, I suppose,” Tam says, tongue flickering.   The Outsider makes a face.

“ _Please_ don’t,” he says.  “As for my name… I could give it to you, Billie Lurk, but you would not understand.  It belongs to an older time.”

Bille rolls her good eye.  Honestly, it’s too early for theatrics like this.  “Try me,” she says

The Outsider sighs.  “Very well,” he says, and then he opens his mouth and speaks and the sound of it tears a hole through Billie’s chest, swells and fills the room and cracks the windows.  The Outsider’s name is whalesong and thunder and the roar of the sea against the shore. Daud’s crooked half-smile whenever Billie surprised him, the sudden hot pain of being shot, the warmth of Deirdre’s hand against Billie’s chest and the cold of a river stone against Billie’s fingertips the moment before it was thrown. 

Tam _screams_ , all of his scales bristling up, fangs flashing, and Billie claps her hands over her ears.  Her nose starts to bleed.

The Outsider closes his mouth, apologetic.  The horrible sound of his name fades slowly, its echoes skirting up against Billie’s feet and curling around the corners of the room.  When the last echo fades, Billie cautiously pulls her hands away from her ears. A headache is building behind her Eye. Her teeth hurt. 

She wipes the blood from her nose and says, “Alright, you did warn me.  I had that one coming.”

Tam hisses furiously, his scales still mantled.  His fear rattles against Billie’s own, a prey-fear, the raw primal terror of an animal confronted with a predator it can’t hope to outfight or outrun. 

 _Easy, Tam,_ Billie says.   _We know him._  

The Outsider spreads his hands, decidedly apologetic.  “My name belongs to an older time,” the Outsider repeats.  His green eyes are very sad. “A time when there was more magic in the world, and power beyond that which was stolen from whales.  I did not know the world would reject hearing it spoken quite so violently, but I did suspect.  There is no place for my name anymore.” 

“Fair enough,” says Billie.  “But we have to call you _something_.”

The Outsider smiles.  “Call me what you like,” he says.  “I don’t mind. A new name is a small price to pay for a new life, don’t you think?”

Billie sighs.  She gets that--being Meagan Foster had been hard at first, because Meagan hadn’t been, couldn’t have been Billie Lurk, but it had been good, too, to step inside someone else’s skin and wear their name for a while. 

“I’ll think on it,” Billie says.  “But you have to help me choose. If you don’t like a name, tell me.”

The Outsider inclines his head. 

“No one’s going to believe us if we try to pass you off as a native Serkonan,” Billie muses.  The Outsider, sunburned and peeling, glares. “Which is unfortunate, because my first idea was to call you _Oscuro._ ” 

The Outsider’s mouth pulls up in a half-smile.  “ _Dark_? ” he says.  “That was your first instinct, to call me Dark?”  

“ _Oscuro, escucho, y por muchas veces he estado medio enamorado de la muerte fácil,_ ” Billie quotes.  Her pronunciation is terrible, of course—Billie can never get the rhythm of Old Serkonan quite right--but the Outsider recognizes the poem and rolls his eyes.     

“Yes, my dear, naming me after a heretical poem is an excellent idea,” he drawls.  “You might as well paint me with pentacles and drop me naked in front of the High Overseer himself.”

Billie laughs.  “It would be a bit heavy-handed,” she says.  “But you have to admit, Oscuro suits you better than something mundane.  No one would ever believe your name was Thomas, for example.  Or Juan. Or--”

“Yes, yes, I get the point,” the Outsider grumbles.  “But I will not answer to Oscuro.”

“Oscar?”

“That either.” 

Billie grins at the Outsider’s expression, churlish and confused, like he wants to keep playing the game but doesn’t quite understand all the rules. 

Then she looks around at the cracked windows, the broken china, the birds that have startled up into the sky and are circling in a great, heaving cloud, screaming to each other.  Down in the street Billie can hear people yelling, asking each other what just happened.

 _“Fuck_ ,” Billie says, feelingly.  The Outsider blinks at her, owlish and bemused.  She glares at him. “You over-dramatic choffer, we’re going to have to _move_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pro tip: If you are bitten by a venomous snake, ALWAYS SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION AND PROBABLY ANTIVENIN. Snake bites CAN be dry (some species bite dry as much as 80% of the time!) but you never want to assume that a bite is dry, because hey. Venom is super not good for you. 
> 
> Updated List of Dæmons:
> 
> Tam - "whole," a Dinnik's viper. Serpents are symbols of death, deceit, evil, et cetera, but they're also powerful symbols of rebirth, healing, and cycles.
> 
> Tavor (Daud's dæmon)- "fracture," a Eurasian eagle-owl. Owls are traditionally symbols of wisdom and knowledge, and are also symbols of mysteries, night, and magic. Owls are skilled hunters.
> 
> Azzo (Mindy Blanchard's dæmon)- "noble at birth," a swift fox. Foxes are trickster symbols, known for their cleverness and cunning, and are also symbols of subtlety, creativity, and luck. Azzo is female.
> 
> Baozhai (Wenyan's dæmon)- "stockade," a grey wolfhound. Dogs are symbols of loyalty, diligence, guidance, watchfulness, and protection. Wolfhounds are hunters, valued for their keen perceptions and their viciousness. In DH, Overseers use wolfhounds as guards and heretic-hunters, so it makes sense to me that the Abbey would associate wolfhounds with devotion, skill, and holiness as well.
> 
> Casper (Emily's dæmon)- "treasure bearer." We haven't met Casper directly yet, but he is a giant kingfisher.
> 
> Hemming (Delilah's dæmon) - "shape-shifter," a snow leopard. Snow leopards are symbols of intuition, sexual power and prowess (not saying Delilah was great in bed, but she sure had a lot of people tripping head over heels to get Delilah to like, step on them and call them names), solitude, silence, and secrets. In the HDM books, Lord Asriel's dæmon Stelmaria is a snow leopard. While writing this chapter it occurred to me that Delilah would ABSOLUTELY sever a child from his soul in order to rip open a hole in space-time and travel to different worlds, from there gathering an adoring army and leading a rebellion against God, so. A snow leopard just seemed to fit.


	5. panterpe insignis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Here's a long chapter to compensate. 
> 
> Enjoy! Thanks for all your kudos and feedback so far!

_panterpe insignis_

 

Billie, Tam, and the Outsider spend nearly three weeks figuring out how to get to Addermire.  Between the Grand Guard and what’s left of the Eyeless, Karnaca is pretty much an active battlefield.  Without powerful people like Shan Yun and Dolores Michaels holding their leashes, and without access to the God of the Void, the remaining Eyeless have taken it upon themselves to restore their former influence by crushing all of Karnaca under their heels.  

The Grand Guard, predictably, has taken exception to this, and the result is a _bloodbath._

Billie manages to snag an empty apartment right on the outskirts of Upper Cyria, so she and the Outsider are safe enough.  The Grand Guard has forced the Eyeless out into the poorer parts of the city, into Campo Seta and Lower Aventa and the Dust District.  Upper Cyria is beyond the fighting.

Billie doesn’t like it much, living here--if she has to hear the Upper Cyria Homeowner’s Association warn her away from strangers, dancing, and eating more than one sweet cream tart a week, she’s going to go _mad_ \--but it _is_ safer for the Outsider, so she can manage.  Billie and Tam would both rather be out at sea, but they can survive here, on the very edge of things.  The Outsider is just happy not to be in the Void anymore, so _he_ certainly doesn’t complain about their change of neighborhood.    

The three of them get the move accomplished in one night, making two trips back and forth with what few things Billie’s managed to hold onto over the years, what coin she’s managed to save, and the next morning they start planning how to get into Addermire.  

They make it about three minutes into planning before an argument erupts.  

“I won’t be left behind this time,” the Outsider says, nibbling delicately on a pear.  Billie has just casually suggested that the Outsider stay behind in the Aventa District, watching the rails.  His expression is mild. “I refuse to spend my entire life waiting and wringing my hands like some frightened creature.”  

“You don’t have any training,” Billie retorts.  “You don’t know how to fight. What if we get caught?  You don’t have magic to help you get out of a bad spot.  The best thing you can do is--”

“What?”  the Outsider growls, suddenly ferocious.  “Watch? Wait?” He says the words with such venom that for a moment Billie’s Eye flickers and paints the Outsider with a towering shadow and a jewel-bright serpent coiled around his neck, her fangs flashing.  

Billie blinks, and the Outsider is young and dæmonless again.  

“All I’ve done for _four thousand years_ is watch and wait,” the Outsider says, his tone rough, like he’s fighting for control, for composure, for the blank, uninterested mask that he showed to Daud and Sokolov and everyone else who’d seen him while he’d been trapped in the Void.  

“I will not be a spectator again,” the Outsider continues.  “I am here, Billie Lurk. I am part of the world again. I won’t be pushed out.”

“I’m not trying to push you out,” Billie says, graciously ignoring the fact that the Outsider is only a few scant inches taller than Billie and about a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet.  She could lift him one-handed and dangle him out the window like a misbehaving novice, if she wanted. “I’m trying to keep you _alive._ ”

After all the work Billie put in to dragging the Outsider free, after the blood and the pain and Daud’s body already gone cold when she’d found him on the _Dreadful Wale_ , Billie will be _damned_ if she lets the Outsider get himself killed.  

Tam hisses, drawing both Billie’s and the Outsider’s eyes to where he’s coiled up neatly on their new kitchen table.  

“We can’t leave him here,” Tam says.  “We don’t know the neighborhood well enough, Billie.  What if the Grand Guard comes knocking, wondering why there’s light in an abandoned apartment?  What if someone saw us move in and calls for the Overseers?”

“Addermire is _halfway across the city,_ ” Billie argues, irritated that Tam is siding with the Outsider.  (The Outsider, for his part, grins smugly.) “How are we supposed to get there?  I’m not Daud. I’m not Delilah. I can’t give him the ability to Displace.”

“I neither want nor need your magic, Billie Lurk,” the Outsider says, sniffing disdainfully.  “I can manage just fine without it.”

Billie throws her hands in the air.  Her own dæmon is against her--Billie can’t win.  The last time she ignored Tam, she ended up sleeping with Delilah and letting a pack of Overseers into the Flooded District.  Billie’s got many, many flaws, but she _can_ learn from her mistakes.  

“We’ll be going by rooftop,” Billie warns.  “If you fall off and break your skinny neck, it’s not my problem.”

Tam, the traitor, just laughs.  

The next three weeks are a blur.  They get the plan hammered out in about six days, but Billie _refuses_ to take the Outsider along unless he has some semblance of training, so for the following two weeks Billie hosts crash course in how to be a Whaler.  

Billie makes the Outsider climb walls, leap over rooftops, hide from Grand Guards and Billie’s own keen eyes.  She makes him cut purses, pick pockets, and crack safes. By the end of his crash course, the Outsider isn’t at Billie’s level by any means, but he’s close enough to a novice in skill that she doesn’t feel quite so alarmed at the idea of taking him with her.  

For his part, the Outsider does everything Billie tells him to without complaint.  As a reward for his uncharacteristic obedience, Billie digs Rulfio’s old poultice recipe out of her seabag and mixes some up, packing the Outsider’s new blisters and bruises with bitter bloodwart and stinging yarrow.  He slowly starts to build calluses, and wears the evidence of his new mortality with delighted pride.

He gets better at pretending he has a dæmon too.  The Outsider gets in the habit of brushing a thumb against his pockets, at whispering into his cupped hands.  Lots of people have dæmons small enough to fit in pockets or under clothes, and it's not uncommon for a small dæmon to hide away where it’s safe from larger dæmons and the crowds that fill Karnaca’s streets.  

The Outsider won’t be able to fool anyone who looks too closely at him, but for the average passerby, touching his pocket and whispering to thin air is convincing enough.  People see what they expect to see, after all. No one expects to see a man without a dæmon. The Outsider’s mimicry, and everyone else’s expectation, make a convincing pantomime.  

While they’re getting ready, Billie keeps an ear to the ground, waiting for news.  The announcement of Corvo Attano’s retirement sets the streets on fire. Karnaca has never forgotten her favorite son, and the news of his retirement stirs up a cloud of gossip and rumors.  

Billie shares what she hears with the Outsider, whose frown gets deeper and deeper every time Attano’s name is mentioned in his presence.  

“What exactly did Delilah do to him?”  Billie asks one night. She’d heard a rumor in the streets that Attano is now blind and deaf, courtesy of Delilah’s tender mercies.  Another whisper claims that he’s gone mad; two coups and two imprisonments have finally driven him insane.

“I do not know,” the Outsider replies, troubled.  Tam is coiled near the Outsider’s knee, not close enough to touch but close enough to provide comfort, should the Outsider need it.  “She turned him to stone--Empress Emily didn’t lie to you--but where she got that power, and how it worked, I don’t know. Daud sealed her in the Void sixteen years ago, using her own magic, but she wasn’t trapped there like I was, rooted in place.  She--taught herself to swim, I suppose.”

If Billie had still been with Daud and the Whalers during the Brigmore fiasco, she would have killed Delilah herself.  Tam would’ve been _delighted_ to do the honors; he’d threatened to bite Hemming everytime Billie and Delilah had met in secret.

 _I would’ve bitten Delilah herself, taboo be damned,_ Tam thinks, darkly.   _She deserved it._

Billie lets that slide without comment, turning the Outsider’s words over thoughtfully.  “How much of the Void did you actually have power over?” she asks. The Eyeless had believed that the Outsider ruled over _all_ the Void, giving the great, yawning darkness a face, a name, but the Outsider’s said more than once now that he only had influence in parts of it.  

The Outsider spreads his hands.  “The Void is deep enough to swallow this universe, and every other,” he says.  “I swam only in the shallows, at the limits of humankind’s understanding. Now and again I ventured deeper, but when Daud turned her spell against her, Delilah found herself in the darkest depths of the Void itself.  What she learned there tore the world apart. You and I will spend the rest of our lives mending what she broke.”

Billie huffs.  “I’m not a maid,” she says, even though her Eye once belonged to a leviathan god and her arm is made of shards of spherite and Void-magic.  “Couldn’t you have dragged Delilah’s spirit out of the Void and made her clean up her own mess?”

The Outsider blinks, surprised.  “Delilah isn’t dead,” he says.

Billie drops her fucking mug.  

“ _What_ ?” She and Tam hiss together, fury and fear blazing up inside them.  It’s hard to tell who’s angrier, Tam or Billie. “Emily _let her live?_ ”

“Delilah tore open a door into a new world,” says the Outsider.  “And Emily sealed it behind her.”

“Daud tried that and it _didn’t work!_ ”  Billie snarls.  “You just told me that Delilah ripped the world apart getting out of the Void!  Are we supposed to sit here and let her do it _again_?”

“You misunderstand,” the Outsider says, face scrunched up like he’s trying to explain natural philosophy to an illiterate silver miner.  “Daud trapped Delilah in the _Void_ , which touches all worlds and can be traversed by anyone with enough wit and willpower.  Emily locked Delilah in another _world._ There is no way out, not for Delilah.”

“She’ll find a way,” Tam hisses, disagreeing with such violence that his scales have bristled up like feathers.  “Delilah always finds a way.”

“The only way into Delilah’s world now is the knife you carry at your hip,” the Outsider says, flatly.  “Emily Kaldwin burned all of her aunt’s paintings, smashes her altars, broke her covens. Delilah is gone from this world forever.”

And by the Void, he sounds so _sure._ Billie wants to believe him.  She does. But Delilah--Delilah--  

“I can’t believe she left Delilah alive,” Billie finally says.  Her maimed hand twitches, and she’s half-tempted to take the Twin-Bladed Knife and bury it in the darkest depths of the earth, bury it so deep that no one will ever find it.  If it’s the only thing that can free Delilah, surely it’s better to destroy it than risk one of Delilah’s devoted “sisters” coming for it.

Emily swore to Billie that she would stop Delilah.  That she’d end it.

The Outsider shrugs.  “Mercy,” he says, gentle and pointed, “is a strange thing.”

 _That_ stings, more than Billie thought it would.  She glares at the Outsider. “I would have killed Delilah,” she says.  “I would have killed her. She deserved it.”

“I think it was less about what Delilah deserved and more about who Emily wanted to be,” says the Outsider mildly, which doesn’t make _any sense_ to Billie.  

“But--”

The Outsider shakes his head.  “When the Empress writes you back, ask her why she spared Delilah’s life,” he says.  “I won’t give away all of her secrets to you, Billie. I don’t play favorites.”

 _I hauled your sorry ass out of the Void!_ Billie wants to yell, but she bites her tongue.  Tam abandons the Outsider and climbs up Billie’s arm to sulk inside her coat, furious and confused.  

She didn’t save the Outsider to berate him over breakfast.  She saved him to--well, she saved him. She’s not going to be the Eyeless, trying to hold the Outsider in her power.  

“Keep your secrets, then,” she says, annoyed.  “And then come meet on the roof of Cienfuegos’ old pharmacy.  We’re going to Addermire tonight.”

The Outsider lets Billie escape their conversation, giving his attention back to his pear.  Tam shivers against Billie’s skin, upset and inarticulate. Billie doesn’t bother clearing breakfast; she Displaces out onto their new balcony and then out across the rooftops, restlessness clawing underneath her ribs.  

She can’t believe that Emily didn’t kill Delilah.  Emily _swore_ she’d handle it.  She swore she’d end it, for all of them, for Billie and Anton and her father, for the cities Delilah had torn apart, for the lives she’d ruined.  

And then she let Delilah _live?_

It’s been three weeks since Billie sent Emily that letter.  Emily’s not sent anything back; Billie’s pretty sure she’s got the letter by now, as it takes two weeks or less to get to Dunwall, but nothing’s come back.  

“I shouldn’t have written to her for help,” says Billie viciously, dropping down onto a dentist’s roof, winded and out of Void energy.  Her shard arm trembles with the effort of dragging her through space. “We can handle Karnaca on our own.”

Tam doesn’t emerge from the depths of Billie’s coat.  “We should find Delilah,” he says, muffled. “We should end it ourselves.”  

For a moment, Billie almost goes to Campo Seta and boards the first boat she sees.  It’d be _easy,_ relatively; she and Tam had magic, had a knife that cut through worlds, had _determination._ They’d find whichever world Delilah had hidden in, and find her, and--

And--

Billie lets her anger slip through her fingers.  And what? Billie can get to the Void, with the help of the Twin-Bladed Knife.  Getting _beyond_ the Void is something else entirely.  What if they got lost? What if she got separated from Tam?  What if they couldn’t find their way back?

“We can’t leave the Outsider,” Billie says, dully.  “We can’t risk it.”

Tam makes a miserable noise against her breastbone.  

They make their way to Cienfuegos’ abandoned pharmacy in silence.  There’s nothing left to say; Delilah is beyond their reach. Delilah’s _their_ mess to clean up--well, Billie’s--but there’s nothing Billie can do.  

It hurts, like a broken bone that’s healed crooked and can’t bear up under Billie’s weight.  

She flexes her fingers, missing her hands.  

 _I touched Delilah with those hands,_ Billie thinks, while she settles into the shadows and waits for the Outsider to find her.   _I loved her with those hands._ The Black Shard Arm never touched Delilah; she’s only got three fingers left on her flesh-and-bone hand. Three fingers that remember how soft Delilah’s skin had been, how her pulse had thundered at Billie’s touch.   

“That’s enough, Billie,” Tam says softly, adjusting himself so that his heart beats against Billie’s, a perfect echo.  

She sighs.  Betrayal tastes like ash in her mouth.  

“We shouldn’t have written to Emily,” she says.  “She’s a noble. She’s back on her throne. She has what she wanted.  Why would she care about any of us?”

Tam doesn’t say anything.  Minutes trickle by; down below, Karnaca stirs and hauls itself up to another day at the docks or the mines or in the streets, caught between blood-hungry Eyeless and indifferent Grand Guards.  An Overseer with a wolfhound dæmon slouches past and takes up a post down the street. Guards in bright red uniforms take up positions in front of the now-gutted bank. Laborers shuffle past, heads down.

Billie doesn’t see the Outsider until he slips into an alley two buildings over.  She half-smiles. He’s a fast learner. He changed clothes before he followed Billie across Upper Cyria, swapping his usual dark clothes for lighter pants and a loose white shirt, overlaid with a brown waistcoat.  He’s pulled a brown cap low over his dark hair. As far as Billie can tell, no one looks twice at the Outsider.

He slips into an alley, out of sight, and then a few minutes later he’s scrambling up onto a rooftop, loping easily across, jumping the gap between one roof and the next, until he’s next to Billie, looking _very_ pleased with himself.  

“How’d I do?”  he asks, smug.

“Passably,” Billie allows.  Tam rustles, emerging at last from the depths of her jacket.  

“Did you bring what we need to get into Addermire?”

Billie didn’t tell the Outsider to grab their gear--she’s half-hoping he’ll have forgotten it, so that she’ll have an excuse to send him back home, where he’s safe--but he turns out his pockets obediently, handing over pitons and a coil of rope and hook mines.

“I wasn’t sure what all you needed,” the Outsider says, mild.  “So I brought it all.”

Billie scowls.  

Tam laughs softly.  “Better prepared than not,” he says.  “Come on. We’re going to take the long way ‘round to Addermire.  We should get there right after the afternoon shift change.”

The Outsider nods.  “I’ll follow you,” he says, which Billie thinks is probably the most obliging the Outsider has ever been to anyone in the several thousand years he’s existed.

Billie tries to leave any lingering bitterness--at Emily, for sparing Delilah, at the Outsider for leaving Daud in the dark for so long, at the Eyeless, at herself--behind.  She leads the Outsider through the Aventa District by rooftop, leaping from building to building. The Outsider follows.

He moves well, the Outsider; four thousand years hasn’t left him clumsy or uncoordinated.  The Outsider moves as efficiently as any Whaler; Billie wouldn’t call him _graceful,_ but then she wouldn’t call herself graceful either.  Daud certainly hadn’t been _graceful_ ; grace was for noblemen, for dancers.  Whalers were fighters. Their work was hard, and there was no grace in it.  Blood and shit and shadows, magic and fear, but grace?

Still, the Outsider doesn’t stumble.  

They pick their way through the Aventa District carefully, focusing on stealth over speed.  Twice Billie has to Displace behind people smoking on their rooftops, wrapping her shard arm around their necks.  Both times the Outsider vanishes from sight, as she told him to; nobody sees him.

The morning bleeds into the afternoon as Billie and the Outsider drop down onto the glass roof of the Aventa Rail Station.  Tam flicks his tongue out, tasting the air. “Two guards at opposite corners,” he reports. “One with a hawk dæmon, one with a serpent.”  

Billie nods, considering.  They don’t have much time; a quick glance with Foresight tells her that the guards won’t hold their positions for longer than half a minute.   “I’ll take the guard with the serpent dæmon,” she says, looking hard at the Outsider. “Can you take the one with the hawk?”

The Outsider doesn’t even hesitate.  “I can,” he says.

Billie weighs her options.  She can trust the Outsider to handle the other guard, or she can try to take two on herself.  

The guards begin to shift, one yawning, the other grumbling about the shortage of cigars from Cullero, and Billie makes her decision.  

“Quietly,” she says, and Displaces away.  

Billie gets her arm around the guard with the serpent dæmon and claps her shard hand over his mouth.  Tam flashes from his place around her shoulders faster than she can see; in a heartbeat he’s got the guard’s serpent dæmon, a sleek blue creature with fangs flashing in her startled mouth, and he doesn’t let her go.  

Behind Billie, there’s a snap, a whir, and a startled yelp.  The blue serpent dæmon struggles wildly, thrashing in Tam’s crushing grip, her fangs dripping.  And then Billie gets the guard in a proper Tyvian chokehold, rearing back with all her strength, and the guard slumps over in her arms.  The blue serpent dæmon goes slack in Tam’s coils.

Billie sets man and dæmon down on the roof and spins around, checking to make sure that the Outsider’s alive and that he’s taken down his guard.  

A woman in a red Elite Guard uniform is pinned to the roof by a hook mine, unconscious, her dæmon at her breast.  The Outsider blinks, pleased.

He gestures at the crackling rail line.  “Shall we?” he says.

“Don’t get cocky,” Billie warns, but she lets him have his little victory.  She taught him the Tyvian chokehold, but a hook mine will knock someone out just as neatly.  

She and the Outsider slip over the edge of the rail station’s roof and drop, mostly soundlessly, onto the platform below.  From there they hop into a carriage, pull the lever, and they’re off.

It’s easier than it should be, especially since it’s the way Emily snuck into Addermire a few months ago, and that makes Billie nervous.  But without the _Dreadful Wale_ at her disposal there’s no other way to get to Addermire, so she just has to hope that there’s no ambush waiting at the other end of the rail.  

“How do you feel?”  Billie asks, one leg crossed over the other.  The Outsider blinks at her owlishly.

“How do you mean?”  

She shrugs.  “Hypatia might know where your dæmon is,” she says.  “She might know someone who’s seen her, who knows what she looks like.”  

The Outsider’s expression flattens out, goes as smooth as a stone.  “So she might,” he says.

“And…?”  

Tam shifts on Billie’s shoulders, uncomfortable, wary.  He doesn’t want Billie to push the Outsider too far.

“And if she knows anything, she’ll know more than I do,” the Outsider says.  “I have not seen my dæmon in four thousand years. I don’t--that is what it is, Billie Lurk.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”  Billie pushes. It’s not that she wants to distract the Outsider while they’re on a job, but she learned from Daud that going into a job without knowing exactly how everyone involved felt about it often led to disaster.  

Once, when Billie was just out of novicehood, she went on a job with Daud, Rulf, and Feodor to assassinate the mistress of some lord or other.  Feodor had conflicted feelings about it, but didn’t tell Daud, and when the moment had come for Feodor to put a blade in the mistress’s back, he’d hesitated.  The mistress had turned, caught sight of four assassins in her bedroom, and had screamed bloody murder.

The resulting mess had taken days to clean up, a dozen hours of hunting down every guard who’d seen the Whalers that night, and several thousand coin in bribes to get the whole fiasco swept under the rug.  Daud had nearly killed Feodor for it.

So if the Outsider is going to hesitate, Billie would rather find out now, when she can do something about it.  

The Outsider’s green eyes glitter strangely, almost black in the light.  “No,” he says. “It does not bother me.”

Billie is pretty sure he’s lying.  “Why didn’t you look for her?” she asks.  “You looked through the Void and saw me. You saw Daud and Emily and Corvo Attano.  Delilah, Granny Rags. Why didn’t you look for your dæmon?”

The Outsider is quiet for so long Billie thinks he might never speak again.  Then, as their carriage pulls in under the shadows of Addermire Institute, he says, “I couldn’t have her.  We were--looking would have made it worse. Do you understand? The whole of the Void was between us.”

Billie remembers sailing away from Dunwall in those long dark days after the Overseers’ attack on the Flooded District.  Tam hadn’t been speaking to her--he hadn’t even been touching her, he’d been curled around the railing as far away from her as he could get--and their ship had been sitting in the water, waiting to slip past the cordon.  

All Billie had wanted to do was look back at Dunwall.  To see the funeral fires burning, the smoke-stained sky, the familiar sloped roofs.  She’d wanted to see if anyone was watching her go. If Daud was on a rooftop behind her, watching, his red coat stirring in the breeze.  

But if Billie had looked back, she would have thrown herself into the harbor and swam back to shore.  She’d had to keep her eyes trained on the southern sky, fingers curled tight around the ship’s rails, because if she’d looked back, she would have been lost.  

“Alright,” says Billie, leaning back, giving the Outsider room to breathe.  “Alright,” she says. “But if you want to find her again, you’re going to have to face her eventually.  You know that, right? You’re going to have to look for her.”

The Outsider doesn’t say anything.  Billie lets him keep his silence. Their carriage rattles to a halt, kicking up dust.  Billie hops up out of the carriage and searches the area with Foresight; they’re alone, at least for now.  

Hand over hand, wordless, she and the Outsider scramble up the cliffside until the cliff becomes the crumbling walls of Addermire, and from there they climb up onto the nearest rooftop, away from any prying eyes.  

Billie uses the height to get a good look at everything.  She likes what she sees.

Addermire Institute is a mess of scaffolding and dust.  Three years of languishing under Luca Abele turned entire wings of the once-gleaming facility into a warren of bloodflies.  Now back firmly under Alexandria Hypatia’s control, the bloodflies have been cleared out and the worst wings of the Institute gutted, but the reconstruction process is slow.  As far as Billie knows, only the sickest patients are being accepted to Addermire now, housed in what little of the Institute remains clean and safe enough for patients.

All in all it’s messy, disorganized, and derelict, full of shadows and empty rooms.  It’s a perfect trial run for the Outsider, and easy enough to break into. So long as the Outsider doesn’t lose it, Billie doesn’t foresee any trouble from this particular mission.

Billie and the Outsider watch the comings and goings of the construction crew, the Grand Guards, and the three Overseers who have been posted at the Institute from atop their roof.  The sun has swung around behind them now, casting Addermire into deep shadow. Hypatia doesn’t leave at night anymore; her apartment in the city’s all but abandoned. She lives and sleeps here, among the ruin, among her patients.  

Billie doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.  It’s certainly convenient.

She knocks her shoulder against the Outsider’s.  “C’mon,” she says. He’s borne the waiting well. Assassination as a career path is mostly just planning and waiting followed by a minute or two of frantic bloodshed; the Outsider’s former occupation makes him well-suited to Billie’s line of work.  

When the shift change happens, Billie Displaces up onto a ventilation shaft just below the roof of the main wing, holding onto the Outsider tightly, and they slip inside.  

From there, it’s almost laughably easy to scramble through service hallways and down an empty elevator shaft--Emily certainly did a number on Addermire--and slip through an open grate on Dr. Hypatia’s floor.  

A quick peek with Foresight shows Billie that Hypatia, and a small yellow ball that must be her hummingbird dæmon--are the only ones nearby.  

“We’re clear,” Billie murmurs, straightening up.  The Outsider blinks, looking a bit put out that all his training has been for nothing, but he nods.  

“So what next?”  he whispers.

It’s Tam who replies, uncoiling from Billie’s coat and stretching out, tasting the dusty air.  “Next,” he says, “we knock.”

The Outsider blinks again.  “We knock,” he says, dubiously.  

Billie flashes him a toothy smile.  “What?” she teases. “It’s polite.” One hand on the blade of the Knife, Billie raises the other hand and knocks on the door of Hypatia’s office, sharply.  

There’s a heavy moment of silence.  

“Who’s there?”  Hypatia calls through the glass.  She sounds exactly as Billie remembers, her voice very soft and curious, but there’s a harder edge to it now that Billie doesn’t remember from the weeks aboard the _Dreadful Wale._

Billie raises her good eyebrow.  Either Grim Alex is closer to the surface than she used to be, or Hypatia’s grown a spine.  

“An old friend,” Bille calls back.  She doesn’t bother disguising her voice.  “We need to speak with you.”

On the other side of the door, Bille can hear Hypatia stirring.  She whispers something to her dæmon, and her footsteps creak across the worn wood floor.  

The door opens inward, and there’s Hypatia, a scalpel drawn and gleaming in one hand.  Her hummingbird dæmon flutters behind her shoulder.

“Dr. Hypatia,” Billie says, calm.  “It’s good to see you.”

“Meagan,” Hypatia says, relaxing.  She blinks slowly for a moment, and then she puts her scalpel down.  “Or not-Meagan, as it were. What name are you going by these days?”

“My own name,” Billie says.  “Billie Lurk.”

Hypatia’s little dæmon zips out of the office, his feathers flashing.  Tam tracks his progress warily; the bird dæmon has a beak like a needle.  

“And you are?”  Hypatia turns her peculiar focus onto the Outsider.  There’s something owlish about her, wide-eyed and solemn.  

“A friend of Billie’s,” the Outsider says.  

Hypatia takes that at face value, inclining her head.  “I’m Dr. Hypatia,” she says. “And this is [ Aison ](https://download.ams.birds.cornell.edu/api/v1/asset/51030831/large).”  She gestures at her dæmon, who flutters to hover near her head long enough to chirp a greeting before flickering off back into the office to examine a beaker that’s about to boil over.  “It’s nice to meet you. And come in, please. It’s drafty out here, isn’t it? ”

The Outsider blinks, owlish enough himself.  “I know who you are, Dr. Hypatia,” he says. “The pleasure’s mine.”  Hypatia steps inside her office, setting her scalpel aside, and Billie and the Outsider follow.  

“So, which of you is hurt?”  Hypatia asks, brisk. She pushes her work aside and studies them, Aison fluttering over to her shoulder.  Hypatia reaches out and brushes her fingers against Billie’s jaw, gentle and clinical.

Billie starts.  

“Does this hurt?” Hypatia murmurs, her fingers trailing just under the edge of Billie’s Eye.  Most people don’t see the Eye itself; some strange Void magic hides it from everyone who’s not Void-touched, shows them only an empty socket, only loose skin.  But Hypatia is Void-touched. As the Crown Killer she helped the rest of Delilah’s coven reach into the Void and pry Delilah loose. She was in Aramis Stilton’s house when Delilah ripped her way free and sundered the veil between the world and Void for good.  “It looks… painful. Who did this to you?”

Billie catches Hypatia’s hand with her maimed one, smiling crookedly.  “A jumped-up little shit with delusions of grandeur,” Billie says. “It’s fine.  It doesn’t hurt.”

Hypatia frowns.  “Are you sure?” she asks.  “I have an ointment that can soften scar tissue and relieve pressure, if you’d like to try it.”  

Billie waves her concern away, Tam settling down across her shoulders.  “It’s fine,” she repeats. “We’re not here because we’re hurt. We need your help.”

Hypatia cocks her head to the side, her eyes sweeping over Billie, and then over the Outsider.  Billie knows those peculiar eyes don’t miss much; Hypatia sees Billie’s Eye, her shard arm, her missing fingers. She sees the Outsider’s shadowed eyes, his pale face, his hands curling around a dæmon who isn’t there..  

Hypatia’s eyes soften.  “Yes,” she says, her voice soft and dreamy.  “I suppose you do. Come, come. Sit down. Ask what you like.  And don’t mind Aison. He likes to wander.”

As soon as she says it, her hummingbird dæmon flits off of her shoulder and zips over to Hypatia’s desk, where he pokes around her mess of papers before launching himself up to hover near the ceiling.  

The Outsider watches him for a moment, fascinated, and then follows Hypatia to a set of plush chairs.  Billie goes too, slowly, keeping Hypatia where Billie can see her.

 _She doesn’t move like the Crown Killer,_ Tam says, tongue flickering.   _And she’s steadier than she was when she stayed with us._

Hypatia on the _Dreadful Wale_ had been a fractured woman, literally; Delilah and Luca Abele had split Hypatia in two and fed the kind, dreamy doctor to the ravenous, bloodthirsty murderer.  Hypatia had been at war with herself for years, trapped inside her own body, forced to kill, forced to like it. Between Emily’s efforts and Anton’s prickly, not-entirely willing care, Hypatia managed to find a balance again on the _Dreadful Wale,_ but for her first few weeks aboard she’d been entirely adrift, more a ghost than anything else.  

Now when Billie looks at Hypatia through her Eye, she sees only steadiness.  

“So,” says Hypatia, peering at the Outsider intently.  “How can I help you? And what can I call you?” Hypatia reaches for a thick pad of paper and wets a pen in ink.  She scribbles down the date and looks up at the Outsider expectantly.

“I--”  the Outsider pales, looks at Billie for help.  

“It doesn’t have to be your real name, if you prefer confidentiality,” Hypatia says, soothingly.  “I treat enough Howlers and scared miners to be discreet. But I need something to put on file, so we can reference our notes in the future if we need to.”  

Hypatia’s switch from gauzy, dreamlike concern to professional alchemist is startling enough that Billie can’t quite think of a name in time; the Outsider’s looking between Billie and Hypatia like a fox caught in a trap, utterly at a loss.    

“We’ll call you Abraxas for now,” Hypatia says blithely, scribbling the name down.  “I was supposed to have an appointment with an Abraxas Ariman this morning, but he never showed.  Do you mind?”

“I--no,” the Outsider says, after a moment.  “Abraxas is fine.”

Abraxas is _ridiculous,_ b ut Billie’s not going to say anything.  She’s had weeks now to help the Outsider find a new name, and she hasn’t had any luck.  Nothing seems to _fit,_ and Billie doesn’t want to saddle him with a name he doesn’t want.  

 _We’re not calling him Abraxas,_ Tam warns.  

Billie suppresses a smile.   _No,_ she agrees.   _We aren’t._

“So,” Hypatia says, once she’s finished scribbling down some little details, “how can we help?”  Her dæmon Aison returns from the ceiling, perching on Hypatia’s knee.

The Outsider takes a deep breath.  “My dæmon and I were… separated from each other.  Not severed,” he adds hastily, as Hypatia draws in a startled, hissing breath.  “But we were separated. Kept apart, I mean. And the people who did it are dead now, but my dæmon is still missing.  We had heard that perhaps some miners up in the mountains had seen a dæmon wandering in the silver mines, and that those miners might have spoken with you about what they saw.”  

Hypatia is quiet for a long moment, writing.  Her dæmon is very still, his head cocked quizzically to the side.  

“How did you come to be separated?”  she asks, softly. “You said your dæmon was taken from you?”  

The Outsider nods jerkily, jaw tense.  

“And you were not intercised?  Severed?”

“No,” the Outsider manages to say.  “We weren’t--we’re not--” His eyes flicker to Billie, something dark moving behind them, a leviathan in the deep, and an expression almost like rage crosses his face.  

And Billie realizes, with a sick jolt in the pit of her stomach, that she shouldn’t be listening to this.  The Outsider’s pain, his fear, his confusion. This isn’t for Billie to hear. He doesn’t want her to see.

 _I’m not his dæmon,_ Billie thinks.   _This vulnerability, it’s for her, not for me._

“Excuse me,” Billie says.  “I’ll--I’ll wait outside.” She doesn’t run from the room, and she doesn’t leave the Outsider entirely unprotected, but it’s a close thing.  She drops a Displace marker beside the door, in case Grim Alex comes out to play, and shoulders her way back out into the stairwell. Tam squeezes her shoulders in comfort.  He’s just as rattled as she is.

They close the door behind them, leaving Hypatia and the Outsider sitting together, Hypatia with her notes, the Outsider with his shaking hands.  

“What do we do now?”  Tam mutters.

Billie shrugs, lopsided.  “We’re out of our depth,” she says.  “And so is he. We’ll just… we’ll wait, I guess.”  

Daud and Emily had been able to be cities away from their dæmons, but that, Daud had explained to Billie once, was a function of the Outsider’s Mark.  The Mark granted strange abilities and made witches out of normal men and women. Dæmons weren’t supposed be in the Void; Tam was protected by the Eye, but other dæmons couldn’t bear it.  They went mad in the Void, tore themselves to pieces after a few minutes.

So, because he called them to the Void often enough, the Outsider let his Marked and their dæmons move apart from each other, without any pain.  Billie’d asked Emily, too; she and Casper had been the same as Daud and Tavor. Being apart from each other caused them no pain.

But the Outsider--four thousand years ago he was _thrown_ in the Void, and his dæmon was left behind.  Not by his choice, or with a god’s lopsided attempt at mercy shielding them, but with all the pain and fear and heart-sickness of being pulled farther and farther away from one’s very soul.  

Billie doesn’t have any frame of reference for dealing with this.  At least Hypatia’s a trained doctor. Billie’s a field medic at best.  Her usual attempts at patching up injuries leave thick swathes of knotted scars.  Stiff joints and lingering pain.

“Hush,” Tam says, nosing Billie’s ear.  “We’re helping him the best we can. But now it’s Hypatia’s turn.  Maybe she knows something. Maybe she can help.”

Billie chews her lip and starts pacing.  

The Outsider is in Hypatia’s office for a long, long time.  Billie paces and waits, checking for guards and Overseers compulsively, but no one makes the climb to Hypatia’s office.  Finally, after what feels like a small eternity, the office door opens, and the Outsider steps out.

His face is ashen, and his eyes are the color of glass.  

“Well?”  Billie asks, stepping towards him almost instinctively, raising a hand to steady him.  “What news?”

The Outsider regards her for a moment.  “A dæmon has been seen,” he says, hollowly.  “In the Shindaerey silver mines.” And then he doesn’t say anything else.  

Billie leans around him, looks to Hypatia for help.  The doctor shrugs, tucking her notes away.

“A few miners have told me of a creature wailing in the depths,” she says.  “I don’t know that it’s your dæmon, Abraxas. But that is where I’d start. There are.... Other places.  The old forest outside the city’s full of strange things. The pirate islands.”

“But you think she’s here?”  Billie asks, because the Outsider’s expression has closed off entirely.  “In Karnaca?”

“In Serkonos at least,” says Hypatia.  Her dæmon flutters down to land on her shoulder.  “There isn’t much research on cases like this, you understand.  Most people who are separated from their dæmons either die of shock or are taken by the Abbey under suspicion of heresy.  But what we know from the case of Lord Attano--”

“What does Corvo Attano have to do with this?”  Billie asks, sharply.

Hypatia blinks.  “Some years ago Lord Attano let Anton Sokolov experiment on him,” she explains.  “During the Interregnum, when I was a student at the Academny, Lord Attano’s dæmon was taken from him and they were kept apart for some months.  When they were reunited, Lord Attano found that he and his dæmon could be on the opposite side of Dunwall City from each other without pain, though Lord Attano told Sokolov that being without her was never comfortable for him.  Sokolov tested their range, if they could still sense each other at a distance, that sort of thing. To prove that Attano was the victim of another’s cruelty, not a witch or a heretic.”

“And?”  says Billie, impatient.  She doesn’t like the Outsider’s color _at all._ He looks like he’s about to throw up or pass out.  

“And Sokolov determined that Attano was no witch,” Hypatia says.  “He and his dæmon had an impressive range, but their ability to separate was not limitless.  They could move across the city from each other, but not farther.”

“So, because… Abraxas’ dæmon was taken from him, and they’ve been kept apart, she ought to be in the city?”  

Hypatia inclines her head.  “Or near it,” she says. “Definitely within Serkonos.  If she were farther, he’d be in unimaginable pain.”

Billie looks the Outsider up and down.  “Are you in unimaginable pain?” she demands.  If he's been in terrible pain this whole time and hasn't said anything, Billie's going to kill him.  She would've moved faster, if she'd known.  She wouldn't have wasted time with Mindy or with training the Outsider.  She would've just  _gone,_ and found his dæmon,,, and brought her back.  

He starts a little, some of his color returning, and shakes his head.  

 _Keep an eye on him, Tam,_ Billie instructs.  Her dæmon hums.

“I’ll ask around,” Hypatia says, some of her dreaminess returning.  “Someone somewhere will have more information, and I’d like to help.  And you should spend as much time in the sun as possible,” she addresses the Outsider again.  “And make sure you eat well. Keep up your strength. You’ll find your dæmon again. Or she’ll find you.”    

The Outsider nods.  “Thank you,” he says, distantly.  “But we really should be going before the shift changes again.”   

“If you need to get in touch, drop a letter for Abraxas at Anaya’s Taberna, in Campo Seta.  Know it?”

Hypatia nods.  “I do,” she says.  “Good luck, Billie Lurk.  Tread carefully.”

The look in Hypatia’s eyes says that Hypatia knows more than she’s saying.  She knows who the Outsider really is.

Billie lets it go.  She touches the Outsider’s elbow.  “Come on,” she says. “We’re going out the way we came in.”  

The Outsider doesn’t say anything.  Billie wants to know very badly what Hypatia told him, but she doesn’t push.  She knows better.

They creep out of Addermire the way they came in, getting back out without any issues.  The Outsider puts whatever he’s feeling into stealth and speed.

They don’t talk until they’re on the rooftops of Lower Aventa, making their way back home.  

“Well, at least we know that your dæmon is somewhere in Serkonos,” Billie says, bracingly.  She’s not entirely sure how to handle the Outsider right now. He hasn’t said a word since they left Addermire and it’s freaking Billie out.  She didn’t know the Outsider _knew_ how to hold his tongue.  She doesn’t know if he wants comfort or if he wants to rage or if he wants to curl up under a bridge and cry himself to sleep.  “That narrows our search down quite a bit. _And_ we won’t have to go freeze off my remaining fingers in Tyvia.”  

The Outsider doesn’t say anything.  His brow is furrowed, mouth pinched, and he moves mechanically, a clockwork soldier wound too tight.    

“We’re going to find her,” Tam says, encouraging.  He leans down until his head is level with Billie’s elbow, tongue flicking earnestly at the Outsider.  “We will. Hypatia gave us a place to start.”

“I am not going back to Shindaerey,” the Outsider says.  Each word falls out of his mouth like a stone. “I don’t care what silver miners have seen in its depths.  I won’t go back.”

Billie frowns.  “Why not?” she says.  “If your dæmon is there--”

“If she’s there, she can stay there,” the Outsider snarls, harsh.  “She can-- _she_ can let the Void swallow her this time, instead of--instead-- _I won’t go back._ ”  The Outsider’s words ring and echo.  The taste of saltwater blooms in the back of Billie’s throat like blood in a wound.  Whalesong rumbles far off in the city.

“ _Whoa,_ ” Billie growls right back, grabbing the Outsider by the elbow and rooting him to her side.  For a moment he struggles in her grip, a bird caught in a net, and then he subsides all at once, flopping against her.  He’s shivering wildly.

“Whoa,” Billie says, more gentle.  “Easy. If she’s in Shindaerey, _I’ll_ go and get her, alright?  I’ll go.”

Billie is not afraid of Shindaerey.  She’s not afraid of the Void. She’s not afraid of--well, yes, she _is_ a little bit afraid of the Envisioned, but they’re enormous rock monsters made up of spherite and hatred and all the pain they inflicted on other people, so Billie feels like she’s allowed to be afraid of them.  

Shindaerey was the Outsider’s prison.  Billie’s prison was her own bones, was the world without Deirdre in it; she’s survived her own prison this long.  She can survive the Outsider’s, too.

 _I love you,_ Tam says, and his love is a coal in her breast, warm and cherished.  

The Outsider huffs against Billie’s neck.  He’s still shaking wildly, like he’ll come apart if the wind pushes against him.  

“We’re going to find her,” Billie says.  “And then you’ll be with her again, and all that happened while you were apart will--it’ll matter less.”  Billie doesn’t want to lie to the Outsider, to tell him that everything that happened while he and his dæmon were kept apart will be like a bad dream when they’re whole again.  It _won’t_ be like a bad dream.  It will be their history, their burden.  

But a burden is easier to bear with two.  Billie knows. Without Tam, she’s not sure she would’ve survived long in Karnaca.  Without Daud and the Whalers she certainly wouldn’t have survived losing Deirdre.

“You are… quite singular, Billie Lurk,” the Outsider says, muffled.  He lets Billie anchor him down for a moment, young and vulnerable, and then he pulls away and lets the mask of the Outsider steal over his features again.  Aloof, untouchable.

“I try,” says Billie.  “Better?”

The Outsider nods.  

“Then let’s go back,” Billie says.  “And rest. We can start fresh tomorrow.”

The Outsider nods again, and this time when he follows Billie across the rooftops his movements are more natural, less rote.  Satisfied that he’s not going to fall to his death because he’s upset and doesn’t know how to express his feelings, Billie turns her Eye outward, searching the rooftops for guards or Overseers or anyone who might see the pair of them and yell for help.  

The roofs are clear all the way to the edge of the Upper Cyria district, when Billie turns and happens to glance down into her own apartment before Displacing onto the balcony and in through the window.  

The window is shut.  Billie left it open on _purpose_ \--easy access, and if the window’s open, she can use Foresight to scout the rooms, make sure they’re clear.  

But the window is shut, and the Eye pulses, reveals a shadow.  

Someone is in Billie’s apartment.  

Instinctively, she throws her arm out and catches the Outsider again, stopping him before he can get any farther.  Tam slips out of Billie’s coat, scales bristling.

Billie focuses and maps out the shape of the intruder and his dæmon.  There’s only one man and his dæmon is at his heels. His dæmon is a wolfhound.  The shape is unmistakable; sloped shoulders, a thin lashing tail, a long, narrow face.  Cold sweat breaks out down Billie’s back.

“An Overseer,” she whispers, cutting the Outsider a dark glance.  “We’ve been found out.”

“We should leave,” the Outsider whispers back.  He’s already scouting the rooftops, searching for a way out.  Billie’s taught him well.

Billie almost agrees.  Almost. But all of her _things_ are in the apartment.  Wood from the _Dreadful Wale,_ her old sword, her only rough sketch of Deirdre.  A handful of Tavor’s feathers, Daud’s last audiograph.  Trinkets, to most people. Trash. But to _Billie_ \--

“No,” Billie says, coming to a snap decision.  “There’s only one Overseer. I’ll handle this. Stay here.”

“Billie,” the Outsider begins, but Billie is already gone, Displacing to the other side of the apartment building.  She chose this apartment because there’s more than one way in, but only the door can be reached without powers; with powers, Billie has _options_ that this Overseer doesn’t.  

“Fangs out, Tam,” Billie says softly.  She shifts aside some boards and bricks quietly, Displacing past a series of wire traps she rigged herself.  With Foresight, she peers around the corner and into the depths of the apartment; the Overseer’s back is turned.  He’s watching the window, the balcony. His dæmon is sniffing at something at his heels. Faintly, Billie can hear Daud’s last audiograph playing, Daud’s voice drifting through the apartment.  

Fury boils up inside her.  

That audiograph is _hers._ For her ears, for Tam’s, not for this Overseer’s.  Daud’s gone but everything he was, everything he meant to Billie, it’s _Billie’s._ This Overseer doesn’t deserve to know even a little bit of what Daud was really like under the name and the mask.  

 _I’m going to enjoy killing him,_ Billie thinks, grimly.  She draws the Twin-Bladed Knife silently.    

 _Ready?_ Tam hisses, coiling himself up on Billie’s shoulder.  Billie checks her voltaic gun. She’s ready; no Overseer is going to come away from here alive.  

 _Ready,_ she says.  Tam’s resolve solidifies in Billie’s belly like a stone.  

Moving silently, Billie Displaces into the apartment, raises the Knife, and comes face to face with the gleaming metal death mask of Corvo Attano.    


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated List of Dæmons:
> 
> Tam - "whole," a Dinnik's viper. Serpents are symbols of death, deceit, evil, et cetera, but they're also powerful symbols of rebirth, healing, and cycles.
> 
> Tavor (Daud's dæmon)- "fracture," a Eurasian eagle-owl. Owls are traditionally symbols of wisdom and knowledge, and are also symbols of mysteries, night, and magic. Owls are skilled hunters.
> 
> Azzo (Mindy Blanchard's dæmon)- "noble at birth," a swift fox. Foxes are trickster symbols, known for their cleverness and cunning, and are also symbols of subtlety, creativity, and luck. Azzo is female.
> 
> Baozhai (Wenyan's dæmon)- "stockade," a grey wolfhound. Dogs are symbols of loyalty, diligence, guidance, watchfulness, and protection. Wolfhounds are hunters, valued for their keen perceptions and their viciousness. In DH, Overseers use wolfhounds as guards and heretic-hunters, so it makes sense to me that the Abbey would associate wolfhounds with devotion, skill, and holiness as well.
> 
> Casper (Emily's dæmon) - "treasure bearer." We haven't met Casper directly yet, but he is a giant kingfisher.
> 
> Hemming (Delilah's dæmon) - "shape-shifter," a snow leopard. Snow leopards are symbols of intuition, sexual power and prowess (not saying Delilah was great in bed, but she sure had a lot of people tripping head over heels to get Delilah to like, step on them and call them names), solitude, silence, and secrets. 
> 
> Aison (Hypatia's dæmon) - "that which is made," a fiery-throated hummingbird. Hummingbirds are associated with productivity, insight, balance, healing, persistence, and renewal. In nature hummingbirds are incredibly fast, energetic fliers, seemingly always in motion, and have to maintain a strict balance between their energy intake and energy expenditure to remain healthy. 
> 
> Abraxas, the name Hypatia gives the Outsider, means "I will create as I speak." The name has been given in our world to both a horse that pulls the sun god Helios' chariot, bringing the sun across the sky every day, and to a demon of lies and deceit. Hypatia absolutely knows what she's on about.


	6. mustela altaica

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the monthlong wait! This chapter is like, 85% dialogue, and dialogue is fucking hard. To compensate, it's about 7500 words.

_ mustela altaica _

  
  


For a long moment, Billie and Attano just stare at each other.  Billie doesn’t scare easy, but something about the mask makes her breath catch in her throat.  The mismatched glass eyes, maybe, one bulging and grotesque, the other tiny, a pinprick of black glass in a ghoulish grey face.  Or maybe it’s the copper wire strung across Attano’s cheek like exposed, raw tendons. Maybe it’s just the mask’s expression. An open mouth stretched in a black scream, a face frozen in pain.  

The terrible expression is enough to loosen Billie’s grip on the Twin-Bladed Knife, its crooked point wavering towards the ground, and that’s why she loses the fight.  

Attano  _ explodes  _ forward, faster than a striking serpent, and his odd folding sword is out and gleaming before Billie even registers what’s happening.  

Instinct saves Billie from catching a sword to the face; she’s ducking out of the way and scrambling out of Attano’s reach before he’s finished striking.  

From there, muscle memory takes over.  

“Down, Tam!”  Billie shouts, and feels her dæmon pull close to her body, flush against her skin.  Billie brings up the Knife in time to catch Attano’s backslash, cursing as the impact rattles her teeth.  

Billie pulls the Knife back, reaching for the Void, and lashes out. Blue light shatters the air where Attano’s head had been a split second before.  He leaps back, wary now, and gives Billie a little room to breathe and evaluate. 

Billie evaluates quickly.   _ I’m fucked _ .  Attano’s taller than she is.  Stronger too, if the power behind his first few blows is any indicator.  He has a longer reach, and he’s got the speed to back it up. Billie’s apartment is close quarters, closer than Billie’d like, and she’s exhausted from a day of running around the city with the Outsider on her heels.  

Corvo Attano was once the best swordsman in the Empire of the Isles.  That was years ago, and back when Billie’d had the Arcane Bond that hadn’t mattered, but she doesn’t have Daud’s powers anymore.  Attano’s age is against him, but his  _ strength _ \-- 

And then Billie doesn’t have any more time to think, because Attano comes at her from the side, the cut-air song of his sword Billie’s only warning before he’s on her.  

She brings up the Knife again, turning aside one, two, three crashing blows.  Attano’s too fucking fast--all Billie can do is block, the force of each slash rattling her arm from her fingertips to her shoulder.  

_ I need room,  _ she thinks, narrowing her good eye.  Room to take a breath, and get in a few slashes of her own. Attano might kill her today but by the Void, Billie’s not going to die easy.  

She Displaces behind Attano, lashing out with the Void before he can turn around to face her again.  She doesn’t have time to make the Void sharp enough to cut, but she  _ can  _ turn it into raw force.  The strike catches Attano high on his sword shoulder and he stumbles, growling behind his mask..  

“What are you doing here?”  Billie shouts at him, already gathering the Void in the palm of her hand again.  Attano recovers and swings low, his sword whistling as it cuts for Billie’s knees.  She Displaces out of the way, up onto her kitchen table. It’s not much of a height advantage, but it will do;  Billie reverses her grip and stabs at Attano’s head. 

The crazy choffer doesn’t even bother ducking.  The Twin-Bladed Knife skitters off the side of his mask with a shriek and a shower of blue sparks.  Attano feints with his sword and kicks Billie in the knee while she’s busy fending off his blade; the blow makes her vision white out for a moment, and she roars in pain, Displacing away to stumble and fall to one knee.  

“You’ll pay for that,” Billie pants, pain exploding behind her eyes.  

_ I’m going to make him bleed,  _ she decides.  Emily will forgive her, hopefully; Attano’s going to kill Billie, but at least she can make him bleed before he does. 

Billie plays crippled, struggling to get to her feet and then sinking back to the floor with a curse, like her knee can’t support her anymore.  It’s a good trick. Attano dances closer,  _ stupidly _ light on his feet for someone his size, and when he gets close enough to strike Billie drops one shoulder and  _ lunges,  _ shoving her entire weight against Attano’s gut.  

It works.  Attano grunts, the wind knocked out of him, and flinches back.  That gives Billie the opening she needs. She brings the Twin-Bladed Knife around, its broken edges flashing black in the low light, and aims for Attano’s heart-- 

Teeth sink into her shoulder, and Billie drops the Knife.  

Attano’s dæmon hits Billie from behind, slamming her forward into the floor.  Her teeth are sharper than knives and her weight knocks Billie clean off her feet.  Billie howls in pain and fury, twisting, trying to dislodge the beast, but Attano’s dæmon is every bit as massive as her man.  She’s got Billie pinned. 

Warm blood slicks down Billie’s arm.  The horrible, twisting feeling of touching another person’s dæmon yanks the breath out of Billie’s body.  Her eyes water. Billie gets an arm underneath her chest, tries to push up off the ground, but she can’t get enough leverage.  The wolfhound dæmon snarls, biting deeper. 

“No!”  Tam screams, lunging out from underneath Billie’s coat, his fangs bared, and hurls himself at the wolfhound’s head.  She lets go, taking what feels like a good chunk of Billie’s shoulder with her. Tam shrieks, throwing his body after the wolfhound with his fangs bared.  

“Tam,” Billie gasps, half-blind with agony.  Bile stings her throat. Dæmons aren’t supposed to touch people who aren’t theirs.  It’s  _ wrong,  _ a perversion, and Billie’s done some terrible things in her life but she  _ never  _ stooped so low as to touch another person’s dæmon.  Daud didn’t allow it. The only dæmons Billie’s ever touched are her own, Deirdre’s once to rescue her from an Overseer’s hound, and now Attano’s, twice.  

Billie wants to throw up.  She manages to rise up to her knees, vision swimming.  Her shard arm still works, thank the Void. Pain doesn’t affect it, not really.  It’s not flesh and blood and nerves; it’s spherite and black magic. Billie moves her fingers.  Progress. 

_ The Knife,  _ she thinks.   _ I have to get the Knife.   _

Billie tries to rise to her feet, to get back up, to get the Knife, to  _ fight,  _ but Attano’s faster.  He kicks the Knife away from her hand and, as Billie lurches forward, he grabs her by the front of her jacket, lifts her up with one hand, and slams her into the nearest wall hard enough to make her entire body rattle.  

Billie spits blood, tries to kick, to get a foot behind Attano and knock him unsteady.  It doesn’t work; Attano just lifts her up and slams her into the wall again, shaking loose dust and plaster and Billie’s ability to form sentences.  

She grabs him with her shard arm, scrabbling for purchase.  Attano shakes her vigorously, like a wolfhound with a hapless rat, and slams her into the wall for a third time, and then again for good measure.  

This time, the force of the impact knocks Billie’s head against the wall, hard.  

Things go a bit fuzzy after that.  

Billie tries to keep fighting, but none of her limbs will obey her.  She tries to call for Tam, for the Outsider, for help, but her tongue is too heavy in her mouth and her words run through her teeth like water.  She tries to See with the Eye, but the magic gutters and dies before she can see more than Attano’s Void-touched outline. His edges are blurry and purple, indistinct, like a silvergraph left in water for too long.  

Attano lets Billie go.  She can’t stand up; she collapses against the wall in a heap, too dazed to fight.  

The white wolfhound snarls something.  Tam is very still near her feet. 

Attano puts his sword away.  He walks over to Billie’s kitchen table and pulls out a chair.  He pours a glass of water from the sink. His dæmon goes sniffing through Billie’s supplies and pulls out a coil of rope.  Attano takes the rope, sets it on the table, and takes off his mask. 

He comes back over to Billie, still in a heap on the floor, and with one hand grabs her by the front of her coat, lifts her as easily as a wolfhound carrying a pup, and drops her, mostly upright, into the chair.  Billie gets details, sense impressions; stray curls of dark hair, brown hands, a strong grip. Everything else is too blurry to hold onto. 

Attano pulls out a chair for himself, sits down across from Billie, and takes a drink. Billie can’t focus on any of his features.  He’s like the Void itself, light and dark and muddy water, his face sharp crags of spherite, his eyes black and bottomless. 

Looking at him makes Billie feel like she might throw up, so she looks at the wall instead.  

Attano says something to his dæmon, or maybe to Billie’s.  Billie can’t make sense of the words but she’s surprised at how deep Attano’s voice is, how rough, smoke and rock and waves breaking against a crooked shore.  

_ He sounds a bit like Daud,  _ Billie thinks and closes her eyes, just for a moment.  

When she opens them again, Attano has nearly finished his glass of water and Billie’s vision is clearer.  She can see Attano distinctly now. The rest of the room isn’t swimming. Her head throbs, pain prickling behind her eyes, and her knee and shoulder are screaming.  

“Back with us?”  Attano asks, in the same deep, rough voice.  

Billie coughs.  There’s blood in her mouth.  “Yes,” she rasps. 

“Good,” says Attano.  “Pay attention. I won’t repeat myself.  Your dæmon,” and he points to Tam, who’s lying dazed on the floor under the wolfhound’s watchful gaze, “will stay right there until we’re finished talking.  If he moves, I’ll take your arm.” 

“Noted,” Billie says.  “Can I have some water?” 

Attano regards her for a moment.  Then he stands up, moving gracefully, serenely, like he hadn’t just beaten the shit out of Billie, and pours her a glass.  He nudges it over to her, keeping clear of her hand. 

Billie’s shard arm, she realizes, is tied down.  So are her legs and her chest. She’s tied to the chair, the knots strong and tight.  Not tightly enough to cause any pain, but Billie’s not going anywhere, not with Attano right there watching.  

_ How long was I out?   _ She wonders, alarmed.  Billie thought she’d closed her eyes for just a moment, but if she was out long enough for Attano to tie her up--

The Outsider is probably starting to worry, now.  

“Drink,” Attano says.  

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” Billie growls.  She does take a drink, moving clumsily against her bindings.  The water takes some of the iron taste out of her mouth and it’s cold enough to help her focus.  Billie shakes her head, using the pain to ground herself back in her body. 

“I’m not here to kill you, Billie Lurk,” Attano says.  He has an accent that’s pure Dust District, rolling and songlike, crisp consonants and rounded vowels.  Billie wonders briefly how well an accent like that served him in court, and then refocuses. 

She laughs.  “Of course you are,” she says.  “I helped kill your lover.” 

Attano doesn’t flinch, and he doesn’t go for his sword.  Billie curses internally. She probably hasn’t  _ earned  _ a quick, clean death, but Billie really doesn’t want to die messily.  She’s too tired for that shit. “You also helped save my daughter's life.”  He leans back in his chair, his expression flat and unreadable. Billie realizes, looking at his stony face, that she doesn’t know much about Attano at all.  

_ What’s his game?   _ She wonders, studying him intently.   _ What does he want from me?   _

He’s handsome enough, Billie supposes.  Tall and broad-shouldered, lean as a hound.  Attano is only a few years younger than Daud, but the years have been kinder to him.  Attano’s hair is copper-threaded brown where Daud’s had been bone-white and he wears it short enough to hide the grey at his temples.  His beard is full and black. Billie sees more scars than wrinkles. His skin is smooth, brown as a nut, and his eyes are--

Well.  His eyes are Emily’s eyes.  Very brown, very clever, very watchful.  The more Billie looks the more she sees the resemblance.  Emily has a narrower face, her mother’s mouth and cheekbones paring down Attano’s features, but Emily and Attano share the same jaw, the same crooked, hawk like nose.  Whenever Emily had been angry or upset, she’d looked like this, like she’d been carved from dark rock, unfeeling and ancient and cold. 

Billie looks away again.  

She can feel Tam stirring, his anxiety and anger and fear jangling against her own.  He likes being powerless even less than Billie does. 

“You saved her several times, in fact,” Attano continues.  “You were apparently essential to Emily’s efforts to defeat Delilah.  Sokolov speaks highly of you as well.” 

“Talked to Anton, did you?”  Billie asks, ignoring any mention of Emily.  She doesn’t--she doesn’t want to hear what Emily told her father of Billie.  Emily didn’t kill Delilah. Emily didn’t--Billie doesn’t want to think about it.  

Attano inclines his head.  “He pled your case with… surprising vigor.  Everyone seems convinced that I’m going to murder you on sight,” he adds, mildly.  “As if I haven’t made my opinion on Daud’s Whalers clear enough before.” 

Attano’s dæmon growls softly.  Attano ignores her. 

“What’s your opinion?”  Billie asks, not sure if she’s baiting Attano or trying to buy time.  Maybe a bit of both. That seems to be where Billie’s head is these days.  

Attano grins like a hound, showing Billie all of his teeth.  “You’re irrelevant,” he says. “All of you. The Whalers haven’t mattered to me since I stole Daud’s key from around his neck.  I had no interest in you at all until I arrived here yesterday and heard about what you did in the Royal Conservatory.”

Billie sneers at him.  His casual dismissal of both Daud, who Billie’d  _ loved,  _ and the Whaler’s she’d shared the middle third of her life with makes ugly anger rise up in her gut, hot and insistent.  “Here to do the Abbey’s dirty work for them, then? You and your bitch of a dæmon are going to put me down for what we did to Cardoza and the Oracular Order?”

Attano’s dæmon growls again, but Attano just blinks, mild as a breeze.  “I’d like to know what you  _ did  _ to Brother Cardoza and the Oracular Order first,” he says.  “I’d like to know what you found in Shindaerey, too.” 

Billie freezes.   _ How does he know about that?   _ Tam’s unease rattles in Billie’s chest.  “Shindaerey?” she says, mocking. “Do I look like a miner to you?”  

Attano waves a hand.  “What you look like and what you are are different things, I think.  You don’t look like the kind of person who’d look after a grumpy old philosopher like Anton Sokolov, or the kind of person who’d protect and guide my daughter, and yet both of them speak very highly of you.”  

Billie scowls.  “I don’t have anything to tell you,” she says.  “I took a contract to disrupt the Oracular Order’s studies in the Conservatory, and I’ve never been to Shindaerey.”  

“Liar,” says Attano’s dæmon, startling the  _ fuck  _ out of Billie.  The wolfhound doesn’t leave her post in front of Tam, but she looks at Billie with baleful yellow eyes.  Billie’s shoulder throbs, and her old scars twinge. The wolfhound’s pretty white face is red with Billie’s blood.  “I can smell it on you.” 

“You did  _ something, _ ” Attano continues.  “I’ve been listening to rumor, Billie Lurk.  The Void is bleeding over into the world, the Abbey of the Everyman is in disarray, and a cult of Outsider-worshippers sprang up to power and fell back down almost overnight.”  

“I don’t know anything about that,” says Billie dispassionately.  “I told you already, I was paid to crash the Abbey’s party in the Royal Conservatory.  The rest of it isn’t any of my business.” 

Attano settles deeper into his chair, almost as if he’s amused.  “Who paid you to go after the Abbey?” he asks. “No one I know is that suicidal.” 

“I don’t ask for names,” Billie says, shrugging as best she can.  The ropes bite into her chest when she does it. Tam is waking for real now, his hot anger and fear thrumming down Billie’s spine.  “Confidentiality is good business.” 

“I’m sure it is,” says Attano.  He taps a finger on the table. He has big hands and crooked fingers.  The result of torture, probably. Billie puts it out of her mind. It’s not  _ her  _ fault Attano got himself caught and thrown in Coldridge.  If Billie’d been in his place, she would’ve run as soon as Daud put his blade in the Empress’ chest.  Staying in that gazebo had been stupid. Of  _ course  _ Burrows was going to pin the Empress’ murder on Attano--he’s the son of a Serkonan miner who hasn’t made an effort to even soften his accent in the thirty years he’s been in Dunwall.  Even now Attano is the perfect scapegoat. 

It’s not Billie’s fault Attano got caught.  It isn’t. 

_ Billie?   _ Tam whispers.  His fear is thick in Billie’s mouth.   _ Billie, what do you need me to do?   _

_ Just stay there,  _ Billie tells him.   _ Don’t move.  We’ll get out of this somehow, but right now Attano is holding all the cards.   _

Tam agrees, taut as a wire.  

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Billie says, flatly.  “So you should either kill me or let me go.”

Attano cocks his head.  “You’re in a hurry to die,” he observes.  “I already told you. I’m not here to kill you, Lurk.  I’m here for answers. The sooner you tell me, the sooner I go away.” 

“I don’t have anything to tell you.”  

“Bullshit,” says Attano.  Billie startles at the profanity.  She doesn’t know why, but Attano seems too…  _ refined  _ to curse like a common sailor.  His accent belongs to a poor man, but Attano has a careful, studied way of speaking that reminds Billie of an old, gentle nobleman she’d been paid to kill back in Dunwall.  

Attano picks up the Twin-Bladed Knife from the table, turning it over in his hands.  “This isn’t a Whaler’s blade,” he continues, unaware of or unbothered by Billie’s disjointed thoughts.  “This is, I’m guessing, what you stole from the Michaels Bank.” 

_ How does he know that?   _ Billie doesn’t give herself away.  “First you’re saying I attacked the Abbey at the Conservatory, then I went to Shindaerey and did… whatever you think I did, and now I’ve robbed the Michaels Bank too?  I’ve been busy, it seems.” 

Attano smiles without any warmth.  “Very,” he says. “And with such mixed results.  Whoever robbed the Michaels Bank did it very neatly, without anyone knowing, not even Dolores Michaels.  But whoever went to the Conservatory, and to Shindaerey, left a trail of bodies in their wake. What did the Eyeless do to offend you?”  

Billie smiles right back, languid.  “I didn’t do anything,” she says. “I attacked the Conservatory because I was paid to, but nobody had enough money to get me to go after the Eyeless.  I don’t mix with fanatics. I got enough of that back in Dunwall.” 

“Yes, Emily told me,” Attano murmurs.  “You were Delilah’s lover.”

Billie wants to snarl at him.  “That’s right,” she says. “I was.  Delilah, who froze you in stone and tore your city apart, who tried to kill your daughter.”  

“You won’t goad me into violence,” says Attano, gently.  “Anton was her lover too, you forget, and I didn’t kill him over it either.”  

“That’s right,” Billie sneers, changing tactics.  She pulls on the deep well of fury in her gut, of the memory of Hemming’s gleaming eyes in the Void, of the blood in the Flooded District.  “You don’t kill  _ anyone _ , do you?  Not even Hiram Burrows.  Are you really that noble, or are you just a pussy?”  

Attano watches Billie, unreadable.  

It’s his dæmon who speaks, her voice soft and fierce.  “What does an assassin know about mercy?” 

Billie twists her head around to look at the wolfhound, frowning.  

Attano’s dæmon is the largest wolfhound Billie’s ever seen.  She’s as tall at the shoulder as Attano is at the hip, white from nose to tail except for coal-dark fur smeared down her chest and belly.  Her eyes are yellow and peculiar. Billie remembers those eyes--she saw them in her nightmares for years. Attano’s dæmon crying out, throwing herself at Billie, hanging on through transversal after transversal.  

The wolfhound blinks at Billie, her lip curling faintly, and looks away.  

“Are we speaking about Dunwall?” Attano asks, studying Billie.  “Is that why you went after the Eyeless, and Dolores Michaels, and the Conservatory?  Settling debts from the old days?” 

Billie turns her glare on him.  She hates how still Attano’s face is.  She’d get a better read on a lump of rock; rock at least cracks when you hit it, and shows you where its heart is.  “Surprised an assassin would have debts?” 

Attano tilts his head to the side.  “No,” he says. “I know something about old debts, I think.”  

Attano’s right hand is wrapped up in black cloth.  Emily did the same thing, when she was still hiding the Outsider’s Mark from Billie.  Recognition sparks in the back of Billie’s head, buried somewhere under the throbbing headache and Tam’s rapidly mounting irritation.  

_ That’s something to consider,  _ Billie thinks, eyes half-closed.   _ Daud  _ hated  _ his Mark.  By the end I was half-convinced he’d cut his own hand off just to die unmarked.  But what if Attano doesn’t feel the same way?  _

She has no intention of telling him about the Outsider, though.  That’s not Billie’s secret to share, and she doesn’t really think the former Royal Spymaster should know about it. 

“Or,” says Attano, studying Billie keenly, “are the Eyeless the ones who killed Daud?”

This time, Billie does start. 

_ We didn’t tell anyone about that,  _ Tam thinks wildly, hissing despite himself.  The wolfhound snarls deeply, but Tam can’t help it.  Billie can’t either--Daud is  _ theirs.   _ He and Tavor died alone, with only each other for company.  Attano doesn’t have the right to bring it up, to throw it in Billie’s face, not after what he  _ did  _ to Daud.  

“Ah,” Attano says.  “I thought so. Daud was the Black Magic Brute, wasn’t he?  The Eyeless were forcing him to fight. Did they kill him?” 

“No,” Billie growls.  She’s reeling, scrambling to come up with a strategy.  Attano has had her on the back foot since he appeared in her apartment.  She needs to change tactics, to gain the upper hand. So far Attano’s proved that he knows a lot more about Billie’s comings and goings than he should, that he can’t be goaded into violence, and that he’s nearly impossible to read, at least when Billie has a concussion.  

“The Eyeless didn’t kill him,” she says.  “Not directly. But what they did to him--” she cuts herself off.  

Attano, bizarrely, softens.  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, and what’s even stranger is that Billie thinks he  _ means  _ it.  She gapes at him.  He half-smiles. “Is that so strange?”  he asks. “I had no love for Daud, but he was important to you, wasn’t he?  Important enough that you bled the Eyeless dry for him.”

“How do you know all this?”  Billie asks. She’s so tired.  “We heard you were encouraged to retire.” 

“I was,”  says Attano.  “But unfortunately I’m a shameless gossip, and I like to know what’s going on.  Karnaca is my home. Emily and I agreed that it was time someone started paying more attention to what goes on down here.”

“Took you long enough,” Tam grumbles, loud enough to be heard.  “Where were you when Luca Abele was killing his own people?”

Attano shrugs.  “I am not a politician.  The Duchy of Serkonos has never been my responsibility.  I’ve never had any political power.”

“It’s your daughter’s responsibility,” Billie snipes.  Attano inclines his head, conceding the point. 

“When I retired and left Dunwall, Emily was fighting back and forth with her council about naming a new Duke,” he says.  “I imagine she’ll come to a decision soon enough, especially once she hears how bad things are here. Delilah killed off the most disagreeable members of Parliament, but they do still like to put up a token resistance any time Emily tries to change something.”

Billie snorts despite herself.   

“So,” Attano says, guiding their conversation back, keen-eyed and calm.  “Now that we’ve established that I’m here, and that I have an interest in what goes on in Karnaca, my question stands; what were you looking for in the Royal Conservatory?  What did you find in Shindaerey?”

“My dear Corvo,” says the Outsider, from where he’s snuck into the apartment from the balcony, “she found me.”  

Billie startles.  Tam hisses in alarm and dives for the Outsider, rearing up in front of him to protect him from Attano’s hound.  

All of the color drains out of Attano’s face.  

“My dear,” the Outsider says again, gently.  “You’re a bit far from home, aren’t you?”

Attano stares at the Outsider for a long time, perfectly still.  His face is unreadable. His outline wavers like a shadow smeared across the sky.  His dæmon makes a long, drawn sound, half growl and half whine, and the Attano turns his peculiar focus back on Billie, dark eyes gleaming.  

He leans forward.  “Start from the beginning,” he says.  “Tell me everything.” 

Billie flicks a glance at the Outsider; he nods.  

So Billie takes a deep breath, and starts from the beginning.  

\---

It’s morning again by the time Billie finishes her story.  The Outsider had managed to persuade Attano to cut Billie loose from the ropes sometime after Billie told Attano how Daud found her.  Attano had listened to Billie’s whole tale, every bit of it, from the streets of Dunwall to Karnaca’s rooftops to the depths of Shindaerey, and had only interrupted to ask questions here and there, straightening out the details.  

Tam, after he’d satisfied himself that Attano didn’t mean the Outsider any harm, crept up into Billie’s arms halfway through the story, curling himself tightly around her, anchoring her, soothing her hurts.  While Billie talked the Outsider clumsily patched up Billie’s bleeding shoulder. Billie’s going to need stitches--she’ll go to the Howlers once Attano’s finally gone, and get one of them to sew her up. She doesn’t quite trust the Outsider’s needlework yet.  

After she’s finished, Attano leans back in his chair, his dark eyes thoughtful.  His dæmon paces the apartment behind him, her head low to the ground. 

“So,” he says, blinking at the Outsider.  “You’re human, then?” 

The Outsider dips his head.  “As human as you are,” he says.  

Attano sighs.  “And your dæmon is missing, so you and Lurk here have been looking for her.”  

The Outsider nods again.  

Attano scrubs a hand down his face, and for a moment he looks his age.  Drawn, pale, and very tired. His dæmon comes up behind him and leans her head against his knee.  For a moment Billie can see why Emily made Attano retire. He looks  _ exhausted,  _ like a stiff breeze will knock him over, like he could lie down in Billie’s shitty makeshift bed and never manage to get up again.  

And then the moment passes, and Attano’s expression evens out.  “That’s… not ideal,” he says, dryly. 

“No shit,” says Billie.  

“I’m serious,” Attano says.  “Karnaca is a dust storm away from collapse.  Three weeks ago, a town in northern Tyvia  _ vanished,  _ houses and people both.  In the Month of Wind a father of three went mad in Caulkenny and killed all of his neighbors and them himself.  People--ordinary people, mind, not Oracular Sisters or overzealous Overseers--are having visions of the Void. Half of Tyvia’s talking of rebelling against the Crown, and the only reason Morley  _ hasn’t  _ rebelled is because all six of its political leaders fell into a mysterious, unbreakable sleep while having dinner together. To say that the Abbey is on edge is… an understatement.”  

Billie frowns, trying to parse all of that.  It sounds like--it sounds like  _ Hollows,  _ like wounds in the gossamer-thin veil between the world and the Void.  But Billie thought that Hollows were only found in Karnaca, where Delilah had first torn her way free in the first place.  To think that there are Hollows in  _ Tyvia _ \--  

Tam squeezes her shoulders, silently warning Billie to put those thoughts away.  

“If an Overseer sees you without a dæmon, he’ll name you a witch in an instant,” Attano continues.  

“I’m aware of what the Abbey of the Everyman will do,” the Outsider says  “Believe me, my dear, my current state is not my choice.”

Billie twitches. 

“So what are you going to do about it?”  

“We’re going to find his dæmon,” Billie snaps.  She’s been doing her best here, ever since she pulled the Outsider back into the world of the living.  Billie’s best might not be  _ great,  _ but she has been trying, and she doesn’t need Attano to show up as if summoned by the Void itself and take control of things.  “We don’t need your help.” 

Attano arches an eyebrow, looking so supremely unimpressed with Billie that for a moment all Billie can see is Daud watching apprentices wrestle in the flood, listening to Rinaldo and Rulfio try and explain why Rudshore is covered in paint, pinching the bridge of his nose as Billie and Thomas glare at each other, bloodied from another one of their arguments.   

It’s very strange.  Billie doesn’t like it, and dislikes the impulse to soften towards Attano, to  _ trust  _ him a little bit, even more.

“I didn’t offer,” Attano says.  He gestures at himself. “I’m too old to be running around on rooftops unraveling ancient mysterious, I think.”  Behind him, the wolfhound dæmon snorts. Nobody in Billie’s apartment believes a word Attano’s saying, but Attano continues as if he hasn’t just lied to all of their faces.  “No, I’m afraid I’ll have to see how I can help in other ways. Will you be based out of this apartment? Upper Cyria?” 

“No,” Billie says, at the exact same time as the Outsider says, “Yes.”  

Tam hisses.  Billie glares.  The Outsider shrugs. 

“He’d only find us again,” the Outsider points out.  “I think it’s best to cut out the hound-and-rat chase in the middle, don’t you?”  

_ He has a point, Tam,  _ Billie thinks.  Her dæmon hisses again.  

“What help can you give us?”  Billie asks, mostly to soothe Tam’s wounded pride.  “You’re  _ retired, _ right?”  she says  _ retired  _ with such emphasis that everyone knows she means,  _ Forced out of your post because you’re too old and too broken to do the job right,  _ but Attano just smiles, infuriatingly mild.  

“I’m sure there’s something I can do,” he says, and stands up.  Attano stretches, his age showing for another moment, and says, “I’ll be in touch.”  He gestures at his dæmon. “This is Desdemona. If I can’t come by myself, she’ll come for me.”  

“Oh will I?”  the wolfhound--Desdemona--grumbles, shaking out her fur.  She eyes Billie with a baleful yellow glare, and then sneezes at the Outsider.  “We’ll keep our ears open, at any rate. Be careful. And  _ behave, _ ” she says, the last words pointed at Billie.  

That’s the final straw for Tam--he puffs up in outrage and literally spits venom, but before he can land them in any more trouble, Attano and Desdemona are slipping out the window and out into Karnaca, swift as a breeze.  

Tam devolves into swearing.  Billie leans back in her chair, feeling each and every one of her aches and pains.   _ Attano’s not the only one who’s getting old,  _ she thinks, hurt and tired.  She eyes the Outsider, who looks far too pleased with himself.  

“Why do you even like him?”  Billie grumbles. “He’s an asshole.” 

“Yes,” says the Outsider, sounding almost disgustingly fond, “he is, isn’t he?”  

\---

Billie knocks back a handful of S&J elixirs and sleeps for the rest of the day.  Tam curls himself up in between Billie’s shoulder blades and keeps watch, his anger at Attano’s treatment of Billie and his embarrassment at losing as badly as they had keeping him awake.

The Outsider does whatever he does when Billie’s not keeping an eye on him.  Billie doesn’t sleep that deeply; she’s aware of the Outsider moving around their apartment, stepping lightly so he doesn’t disturb her.  

At some point during the day, he brings Billie a glass of water and sets it by her bed, in easy reach.  He vanishes at some point too, slipping out the window and back in thirty minutes later. Billie doesn’t bother opening her eyes.  At this point, she’s in too deep. If she can’t trust the Outsider, she can’t trust anybody. 

Billie doesn’t sleep deeply enough to dream.  She’s glad. With everything that’s happened, with Attano and his solemn eyes and his wolfhound dæmon, Billie knows she’d dream of Dunwall.  

She’s had enough of that lately.  

Finally, after the sun has set again and plunged Karnaca back into cool, sweet-scented evening, Billie rolls over with a groan, scrubbing at her face with her shard hand, and forces herself to get up.  

The Outsider, from where he’s sitting perched on the kitchen table, looks up.  He’s got a book that he closes and tucks away as soon as Billie stirs. He raises an eyebrow.  “Water’s by your elbow,” he says. “And there’s soup still warm on top of the stove.” 

Billie checks herself over carefully, relying on Tam to help her suss out any lingering hurts.  Her head still aches, but all of her teeth are still in her mouth, and she doesn’t think anything is still broken.  She flexes all of her toes and remaining fingers, rolls her shoulders cautiously. Her knee will hold her weight and the bite on her shoulder has closed over; by morning, it should be completely healed.  She’ll probably stop in and have a Howler look at in anyway, in case she needs to stitch it up, but for now she should stay in one piece. 

_ Or in several,  _ she thinks, missing her arm and her eye and her fingers.

Satisfied, Billie says, “Since when can you cook?”

The Outsider sighs.  “Soup is not difficult to make,” he says.  “And if you’re going to be rude about it, you can’t have any.” 

Tam, also satisfied that Billie can stand up without falling over, coils himself in his customary place over Billie’s shoulders.  “Thank you,” he says. He squeezes Billie’s shoulders. “She appreciates it, even if she won’t say.” 

Rolling her remaining eye, Billie gets up.  She drinks the water first, hoping it’ll banish her headache, and stumps over to the kitchen, where she helps herself to a bowl of soup. 

“It’s good,” she says, after the first few spoonfuls.  She’s surprised; Billie can sort of cook, because she’s been on her own for nearly sixteen years and the Void knew Anton wasn’t ever going to deign to pick up a kitchen knife, but the Outsider so far has been, well, a bit useless.  

The Outsider preens, obviously pleased.  “Good,” he says. “It ought to help. You weren’t in very good shape, when I arrived.” 

Billie snorts.  “Understatement,” she grumbles.  

When she sees Attano next, she’s going to kick his ass.  His sudden appearance tripped Billie up, gave him the advantage, but Billie won’t let him have such an advantage again.  Next time, she’ll beat him. He could stand to learn a little humility. 

Tam flicks his tongue against BIllie’s ear.   _ So long as you remember to watch for the wolfhound, we should win,  _ he says.  

Billie grumbles to herself, but finishes her bowl of soup.  It  _ is  _ good, salty and warm, and by the time her spoon scrapes the bottom of the bowl, she feels much more like herself.  Her knee’s going to hurt for a day or two, but Attano didn’t manage to do any lasting damage. 

She pushes her empty bowl away and looks at the Outsider, head cocked.  “So what now?” she asks. “What do we do about Attano?” 

The Outsider smiles.  “Leave him be,” he says.  

Billie frowns.  “Is that safe?” 

The Outsider shrugs.  “Corvo will do what he thinks is right, regardless of what you want him to do,” he says.  “And once he sets himself on a path, he won’t turn from it. He has, I think, decided to help.  It’s best to just… let him.” 

“We could leave,” Tam points out.  “Attano’s a stubborn old hound, I’ll allow that--” It was hard to  _ ignore  _ that.  Attano had done the impossible, again and again.  Escaped from Coldridge Prison, took down Burrows, defeated Daud, put his daughter on the throne and kept her there, all without killing anyone.  He’s survived whatever Delilah did to him, too, and doesn’t seem to be much worse for wear. 

Now that she thinks about it, Billie’s surprised Emily made him retire.  Attano’d been able to bring Billie down handily enough. He certainly doesn’t fight like a man unfit for his job.  

“--but he’s just a man,” Tam continues.  “We can shake him off, if we want to.” 

The Outsider shakes his head.  “You cannot,” he says. “And I don’t think I want to.” 

_ Fuck me sideways,  _ Billie thinks, despairing.  She resists the urge to go back to bed.  “What,” she begins, slowly, “is your relationship with Corvo Attano?”

“He is a friend,” says the Outsider immediately.  “And a man I admire.” 

“ _ Why? _ ” It’s not that Billie thinks Attano’s the next Delilah, but he is dangerous, and she doesn’t really want the man who’s lover she helped murder coming around for coffee.  

The Outsider sighs again, his face screwed up like he’s reaching for words to try and explain the movement of the Universe or the depth of the Void, something incomprehensible but true as the sea.  

“I gave Corvo my Mark because I wanted to see how long it would take him to drag Dunwall down to its knees,” he says, slowly.  “But instead Corvo spared not only Hiram Burrows and Daud, the men who ruined his life, he spared all of Dunwall. Weepers, corrupt City Guards, even my Vera, who gave him more than a bit of trouble.  There is… there is not a man alive who is kinder than Corvo Attano,” the Outsider says. “Who is more honorable. Around every corner was a chance to become a monster, and instead Corvo chose to stay a good man.”  

Billie doesn’t say what she wants to.  She doesn’t say that there’s a difference between  _ mercy  _ and cruelty masquerading as such--she’s heard what happened to Waverly Boyle.  To the Pendeltons. To Daud. 

It would have been much kinder to kill Daud.  To spare him the years of guilt and grief. 

But she doesn’t want to have that argument, not really, not today, so she lets it go and asks, still dubious, “And you think he’ll help us?”

“He will,” says the Outsider.  “Whether you want him to or not.” 

Billie bites back the urge to groan. She was afraid of that.  But if the Outsider thinks Attano will help, and restrain himself from killing Billie, she supposes she can live with it.  There’s a lot Billie can live with. 

Tam squeezes her shoulders again.  

“So what’s our next move?”  Billie asks. 

“ _ Your  _ next move will be to visit a doctor, or at least a good seamstress,” says the Outsider, nodding at her wounded shoulder.  “Mine is to figure out a way to avoid the Abbey’s prying eyes.” He taps the book he tucked away. “There are charms and spells that can divert attention.  I’m sure I’ll find something useful while you’re away.” 

Tam flickers his tongue.  “You want us to leave you alone,” he says, suspiciously.  “Why?”

The Outsider blinks, guileless.  Billie doesn’t believe his innocent face for a second.  Neither does Tam. 

But they  _ do  _ need to see someone who at least knows their way around a needle, so Billie says, grudgingly, “Fine.  Just don’t burn the apartment down. And don’t let Attano in here, if he shows back up again.”

The Outsider folds a hand over his heart, his green eyes dancing.  “Done,” he promises.

Billie finishes her soup, pondering the Attano Problem, and heads out across the rooftops to the Dust District when she’s finished.  She spends the trip soothing Tam, letting him soothe her in turn, and by the time they reach the Crone’s Hand they feel a bit better about the whole thing.  

Attano is dangerous, but he doesn’t seem to want Billie and Tam dead, and he  _ had  _ seemed fond enough of the Outsider to want to help.  The best thing to do now is let him help, and to keep an eye on him.  Attano’s strong and clever and determined; he’s a good asset, for now.  

At the Crone’s Hand, Billie agrees to kill a man who’s spying on the Howlers for the Abbey in exchange for some proper medical care.  She goes over the details of the contract with Mindy and Azzo while a short, dour-faced Howler with a frog dæmon cleans Billie’s wounded shoulder and stitches her back together.  

She’s done and on her way in less than two hours, Displacing back across the rooftops with Tam looped around her neck.  She’s just reached the edge of Upper Cyria when she catches sight of a shadow on a rooftop across the square, and freezes.  

Tam hisses a curse.

Crouched on the opposite roof,  [ Abia ](https://53744bf91d44b81762e0-fbbc959d4e21c00b07dbe9c75f9c0b63.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/media/18/184B2969-E672-4AF5-AB2F-F47F746351BA/Presentation.Large/Altai-weasel-walking.jpg) on his shoulder, is Thomas.  

“Son of a bitch,” Billie says, loudly, because this is the second face from the Dunwall days to show up in less than a week.  Thomas, fifteen years older than Billie remembers him but no less sour-faced, glares at her. “Go away, Thomas,” she calls. 

“No,” Thomas shouts back.  “What the fuck are you doing?  You’re supposed to be retired!”  

Billie sighs, and Displaces across the roof to Thomas’ elbow.  He jerks back almost comically and wobbles before his Whaler instincts take over and he drops deeper into a crouch, holding his balance.  

Billie grins at him without any warmth, and Tam flashes his fangs.  “What are you doing here?” she demands. 

Billie left Dunwall only a few weeks before Attano came for Daud, and after he came Daud disappeared, leaving the Whalers on their own.  He’d let them keep the Arcane Bond, so Thomas had stepped up and kept the Whalers running for a time, but then the Bond had faded and the Whalers either drifted apart or started fighting amongst each other, so Thomas had quietly contacted Billie and asked for a way out. 

That had been about a year after Delilah.  Billie’d come and got him. She’d taken Thomas and a few others out of Dunwall and up to Caulkenny.  None of the others had bothered to keep in touch, but she and Thomas had traded letters now and then across the years.  When she’d started to search for Daud, Thomas had been the first one Billie had written to. Thomas had loved the old man in an easy and uncomplicated way.  

“I could ask the same of you,” Thomas retorts.  His dæmon Abia is a pretty little thing, even after all these years.  Thomas himself looks older; handsome still, his eyes a bright and vivid blue, but his cornsilk hair has receded a bit and worry has carved deep lines around his mouth.  

Abia, though, is still beautiful, her fur a rich, pale red, her black eyes bright and watchful.  She’s hardly longer than the length of Billie’s forearm, but she’s got teeth, and she can go farther away from Thomas than Tam can from Billie.  

“I’m working,” says Billie.  “Clearly.” 

“With Daud?”  Thomas asks, disbelieving.  “What did you do to get him to forgive you?  I thought he broke the Arcane Bond.” 

“The Arcane--?”  

“Daud is dead, Thomas,” Tam interrupts.  “We don’t have the Arcane Bond.” 

Tam says it so bluntly that for a second Thomas and Abia both stare at Billie, uncomprehending.  

“Tam’s not kidding,” Billie says.  “Daud is dead. He died… over a month ago, now.”  

“How did--”  Thomas’ voice wavers, breaks, and he clears his throat.  “How did he die?” he asks. “You didn’t--?”

“No,” Billie snaps.  “I didn’t. He just… died.  He was old, and sick. He went peacefully, as far as I know.  Died in his sleep.” 

“Daud died in his  _ sleep _ ?”  

And when Thomas says it like that, it  _ does  _ sound ridiculous, absurd, like something out of a penny dreadful.  Daud, dying in his sleep? It was a knife that was meant to get Daud, or a bullet, or a fall.  Daud wasn’t supposed to die in his sleep. 

“He did,” Tam says, gentler.  “On the  _ Dreadful Wale. _ ” 

“You have to tell me what happened,” Thomas demands.  “He couldn’t have just--he couldn’t have just  _ died. _ ”  

Billie sighs.  “He did,” she says. 

“Were you with him?”  

She shakes her head.  “I was out on a job,” she says.  “Tavor was with him, though. I burned him, on the  _ Wale. _ ”  

Thomas opens his mouth to say something, but must see a shard of his own grief reflected in Billie’s face, because he closes it again.  His dæmon lets out a little heartbroken wail. 

Billie sighs again.  “Come with me,” she says.  “I’m holed up not far from here.  I’ll explain there.” 

For a moment Thomas looks as if he might refuse, but then he nods, smoothing his grief away, hiding it as neatly as if he were still wearing a whaler’s mask.  “Fine,” he says. “I have some questions.” 

Thomas has had questions since the day he and Billie were thrown together, two street kids snatched up and brought into a confusing world of blood and magic.  That, at least, hasn’t changed. 

“Alright,” she says, turning around.  She’s pretty confident Thomas won’t try to stick a knife in her back, but she sets a Displace marker several yards away just in case.  “Come on. This way.” 

She leads Thomas across the rooftops, moving slow enough to compensate for the fact that he doesn’t have magic anymore.  Down below, the public announcement system crackles to life. 

“Attention, citizens of Karnaca,” the broadcaster says.  Billie frowns, noticing the difference between this announcement and the Upper Cyria Homeowners Associations usual drivel.  She stops moving. Something important is happening. 

“Seven months ago, Luca Abele, formerly the Duke of Serkonos, was executed for his crimes against the people of Serkonos and the Empire of the Isles,” the broadcaster continues.  “Since that time, Serkonos has been without a Duke. After much deliberation, Empress Emily Kaldwin has decided on a worthy successor, and will leave Karnaca in his capable hands.”  

_ Emily got my letter,  _ Billie realizes, a cold sweat breaking out down her back.   _ Fuck, I didn’t think she’d  _ listen.  

Tam squeezes her shoulders comfortingly.  

“By order of the Empress, Corvo Attano has been named Duke of Serkonos,” the broadcaster says, her voice thick with pride.  “His Grace has arrived in Karnaca and will take up his post at once.” 

The rest of the announcement is lost to a sharp ringing in between Billie’s ears.  

_ I’m sure there’s something I can do, _ Attano had said, modestly.   _ I’ll be in touch.   _

He’d sat in her apartment and told Billie that he’d never had the power or political sway to help Serkonos.  He sat there and pretended to be a tired old man, his glory days behind him. 

Billie closes her eyes and says, already exhausted, “You know, Tam, I think I hate him.”   

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tam - "whole," a Dinnik's viper. Serpents are symbols of death, deceit, evil, et cetera, but they're also powerful symbols of rebirth, healing, and cycles.
> 
> Tavor (Daud's dæmon)- "fracture," a Eurasian eagle-owl. Owls are traditionally symbols of wisdom and knowledge, and are also symbols of mysteries, night, and magic. Owls are skilled hunters.
> 
> Azzo (Mindy Blanchard's dæmon)- "noble at birth," a swift fox. Foxes are trickster symbols, known for their cleverness and cunning, and are also symbols of subtlety, creativity, and luck. Azzo is female.
> 
> Baozhai (Wenyan's dæmon)- "stockade," a grey wolfhound. 
> 
> Casper (Emily's dæmon) - "treasure bearer." We haven't met Casper directly yet, but he is a giant kingfisher.
> 
> Hemming (Delilah's dæmon) - "shape-shifter," a snow leopard. Snow leopards are symbols of intuition, sexual power and prowess, solitude, silence, and secrets.
> 
> Aison (Hypatia's dæmon) - "that which is made," a fiery-throated hummingbird. Hummingbirds are associated with productivity, insight, balance, healing, persistence, and renewal. 
> 
> Abraxas, the name Hypatia gives the Outsider, means "I will create as I speak." The name has been given in our world to both a horse that pulls the sun god Helios' chariot, bringing the sun across the sky every day, and to a demon of lies and deceit. Hypatia absolutely knows what she's on about.
> 
> Desdemona (Corvo's dæmon) - "ill-starred, ill-fated," a white wolfhound. Dogs are symbols of loyalty, diligence, guidance, watchfulness, and protection. Wolfhounds are hunters, valued for their keen perceptions and their viciousness. In HDM, dogs are the dæmons of both servants and soldiers; the particular breed of the dog denotes a particular level of skill in the soldier or servant. 
> 
> Abia (Thomas' dæmon) - "God is my father," a mountain weasel. Weasels are symbolic of stealth, secrecy, knowledge, and honor. Many cultures venerate the weasel for its ingenuity, and weasels in their white winter fur were once thought to prefer death to sullying their color. Weasels are also ancient enemies of snakes and serpents.

**Author's Note:**

> Updated List of Dæmons:
> 
> Tam - "whole," a Dinnik's viper. Serpents are symbols of death, deceit, evil, et cetera, but they're also powerful symbols of rebirth, healing, and cycles. 
> 
> Tavor (Daud's dæmon)- "fracture," a Eurasian eagle-owl. Owls are traditionally symbols of wisdom and knowledge, and are also symbols of mysteries, night, and magic. Owls are skilled hunters.
> 
> Azzo (Mindy Blanchard's dæmon)- "noble at birth," a swift fox. Foxes are trickster symbols, known for their cleverness and cunning, and are also symbols of subtlety, creativity, and luck. Azzo is female. 
> 
> Baozhai (Wenyan's dæmon)- "stockade," a grey wolfhound. Dogs are symbols of loyalty, diligence, guidance, watchfulness, and protection. Wolfhounds are hunters, valued for their keen perceptions and their viciousness. In DH, Overseers use wolfhounds as guards and heretic-hunters, so it makes sense to me that the Abbey would associate wolfhounds with devotion, skill, and holiness as well. 
> 
> Casper (Emily's dæmon)- "treasure bearer." We haven't met Casper directly yet, but he is a giant kingfisher.


End file.
